Khartoum delegates head to Chad

2004-10-04 12:52

Khartoum - A Sudanese government delegation headed to Chad on Monday to join ethnic minority rebels at a meeting of an African Union mission observing a troubled April ceasefire in the ravaged western region of Darfur.

The Ndjamena talks, which were also to be attended by observers from the European Union and the United States, were due to hear allegations of ceasefire violations by either the Sudan army and its Arab militia allies, or the two rebel factions.

Junior foreign minister Al-Tigani Salih Fidhail headed the government team, accompanied by junior humanitarian affairs minister Mohammed Yusuf Abdullah, a foreign ministry official said.

As the delegation left, a Khartoum newspaper reported that seven Arab civilians, two of them women, had been killed in North Darfur state in an attack which government officials blamed on "outlaws".

Another nine people were wounded in Saturday's ambush on the road between Mellit and the village of Kumah, the independent Akhbar Al-Youm daily said.

Seven gunmen on camels attacked the civilians from the Arab Ziadiyah tribe as they were driving along the track, the paper said, adding that the victims were unarmed.

The wounded were taken to hospital in the state capital of El Fasher further south, where police commissioner Abdullah Mohammed al-Zubair vowed to stamp out "the outlaws".

Some 50 000 people have died and 1.4 million fled their homes in Darfur since the launch of the rebel uprising early last year prompted a bloody clampdown by the government, according to UN estimates.

Many Arab tribes like the Ziadiyah were armed by the authorites and given free rein to attack minority villages suspected of supporting the rebels, in a policy that Germany and the United States say amounted to genocide.

- SAPA