Sudan vowed on Wednesday to continue its search for a French special forces soldier missing in war-torn Darfur for two days after his European Union peacekeeping patrol strayed across the border from Chad.
The commando went missing on Monday when at least one vehicle taking part in the EU’s mission to Chad crossed into Sudan. An exchange of fire followed in which a Sudanese soldier and a civilian were killed and a French soldier wounded, but details on the incident remain sketchy.
”We didn’t receive any result from the search around the area where the confrontation took place,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadiq. ”The search is going to continue. For how long I don’t know.”
The commander of the EU’s mission to Chad, Lieutenant General Patrick Nash, has expressed regret for the troops ”accidentally” crossing the remote unmarked border, but has provided few details of how the soldier went missing.
Sadiq said that no casualties remained at the site of the clash as ”those injured were evacuated or taken back to Chad but this person, his whereabouts, were later on conveyed to us.
”We have no idea [where he is] but definitely he was not left behind at the place of the clashes.”
Sudan had warned EUFOR it had no mandate to cross the border into Sudan. Last month, Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of UN peacekeeping operations, warned that violence between Sudan and Chad fought out by rebel groups on each side threatened to destabilise the region and could lead to a regional war.
The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur, the vast region of western Sudan beset by civil war between ethnic minority rebels and the Arab-dominated government, said it was trying to establish the details of Monday’s incident.
The 14-nation EUFOR mission of 3 700 troops deployed to neighbouring Chad and the Central African Republic last month after a delay caused by a rebel assault on the Chadian capital.
It has a UN mandate to protect refugees from Darfur as well as people internally displaced by insurgencies in Chad and the northern CAR. – AFP
