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UN Peacekeeper Killed in Darfur

By Derek Kilner

Nairobi

07 October 2008

A Nigerian soldier serving with the U.N. peacekeeping mission in the Darfur region of western Sudan has died after gunmen ambushed the convoy he was traveling in. As Derek Kilner reports from VOA's East Africa bureau in Nairobi, the new head of U.N. peacekeeping operations is visiting the country.

As many as 60 gunmen ambushed U.N. peacekeeping vehicles late Monday north of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur.

A spokesman for the mission, Daniel Adekera, spoke to VOA from Darfur. He said, "One of our convoys in South Darfur was ambushed. One of the soldiers was critically wounded and it resulted in his death. From preliminary reports it appears to be a banditry attack."

Another U.N. spokesman said one of the attackers was wounded in the gunfight and was captured and handed over to Sudanese authorities, but the attackers have not been identified.

Nine peacekeepers from the U.N.-African Union mission, known as UNAMID, have been killed since July.

Meanwhile, the new head of the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations, Alain Le Roy, is visiting Sudan. After arriving Monday in Khartoum, he is scheduled to visit the capitals of Darfur's three states, beginning with El Fasher, on Wednesday.

The United Nations also deployed a 10,000 member peacekeeping mission following a peace agreement that ended a north-south civil war in 2005, and Le Roy will also visit a number of sites in southern Sudan.

Le Roy took over his position in June this year, succeeding Jean-Marie Guehenno, who had cautioned against deploying a mission to Darfur without a viable peace agreement and commitments for troops and equipment.

Those concerns have been borne out, according to many observers. UNAMID, which took over from an existing African Union force at the beginning of the year, is slated to have a force of 26,000. But fewer than 10,000 troops have deployed, many of them troops from the A.U. force who have simply donned the U.N. blue helmets.

Roadblocks from the Sudanese government, which has never welcomed the force, as well as a reluctance on the part of U.N. member states to contribute the necessary troops and equipment, have delayed deployment. No more than half of 26,000 are expected to arrive by the end of the year.

More than 2.5 million people have been displaced by the conflict in Darfur since 2003, and between 200,000 and 300,000 have been killed, according to international estimates. Khartoum puts the number killed at no more than 10,000.