Militia kill 16 in Darfur - SLM
2004-11-27 21:39
Cairo - Sudan's pro-government Janjaweed militia killed 16 people on Saturday in a western village in the troubled Darfur region, a spokesperson of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement told AFP by telephone.
The 16 included "four women and two children," said Mohammed Hamed Ali, accusing the Janjaweed of "terrorising the populace in order to chase them out of the region".
"It is a flagrant violation of the ceasefire and we have asked African observers (charged with supervising the Darfur truce) to go there to declare this a violation themselves," he added.
The bodies of the victims would not be buried until the observers arrived, he said.
African Union Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare urged warring parties in Darfur to refrain from ceasefire-violating hostilities, in a statement issued on Friday.
Clashes between the Sudanese army and rebels erupted in North Darfur's town of Tawilla several days ago and have forced the World Food Programme to temporarily suspend its operations there.
The clashes violate the truce deal signed in Chad in April as well as a protocol to promote security signed in November, Friday's statement said.
Since fighting flared in Darfur in February 2003, more than 70 000 people have been killed or have died from hunger and disease in the area, according to the United Nations, and another 1.5 million have been displaced.