UK charity leaving Sudan
2004-12-21 13:45
London - Save the Children UK is pulling out of the Darfur region of Sudan because four of its workers have been killed there, the group said on Tuesday.
The aid organisation, which had worked closely with the United Nations on humanitarian assistance in the area, said the decision had been agonising but was necessary because risks to staff were too great.
Mike Aaronson, Save the Children UK's director general, told British Broadcasting Corporation. radio that withdrawing from Darfur was "probably the worst decision I have ever had to take in my time at Save the Children".
"Although we are used to working in very tough and difficult and dangerous places, there is a bottom line in terms of what we can ask our staff to do," he said.
Two Sudanese employees of Save the Children - medical assistant Abhakar el Tayeb and mechanic Yacoub Abdelnabi Ahmed - were killed on December 12 when their convoy came under fire in South Darfur. Another worker was injured. The African Union has blamed Darfur's largest insurgent group, the Sudan Liberation Army, for the attack.
In October, two other employees of the group were killed by a land mine in North Darfur.
Save the Children UK said after the most recent attack that it was suspending its work in the area and withdrawing its team back to Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state.
Disease and famine have killed 70 000 in Darfur since March, the World Health Organisation says. There is no official reckoning of the overall toll of the war but the United Nations says the nearly two-year crisis is the world's gravest.
The SLA and another rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, took up arms in February 2003 to fight for more power and resources in the western desert Darfur states. The Sudanese government responded by backing an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, which is accused of targeting civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson.
Aaronson said Save the Children had 350 staff in Darfur, providing 250 000 people with health care, food and education.
He said the crisis was "an appalling indictment of the effectiveness of the international community," saying there had been frequent ceasefire violations by all sides.
- AP