Residents of a refugee camp in Sudan’s Darfur region complained to peacekeepers on Thursday about the threatening presence of government troops as fears grew of a new attack after a deadly clash last month.
A raid by soldiers into the impoverished Kalma camp in south Darfur on August 25 left more than 30 people dead, including women and children.
”The government is still surrounding us,” Abdelrahman Omer, a camp resident, said. ”We have not seen any [peacekeeper] patrols, and people are frightened.”
The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur (Unamid), which launched permanent patrols inside Kalma after the attack, this week noted ”an increased presence” of police 5km from the camp.
Henry Anyidoho, the force’s deputy special representative, visited Kalma on Wednesday to assess the security situation and humanitarian needs.
He said the force had expressed its ”grave concern over the tragic incident” to Khartoum, but was working with Sudanese soldiers on the ground to prevent a repeat of the bloody fighting, according to a Unamid statement on Thursday.
No one from the military was immediately available to comment on the alleged troop build-up. — AFP
