UN says 4 peacekeepers killed in ambush in Darfur
Source: seattlepi.com
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Four Nigerian peacekeepers were killed and eight wounded in an ambush in Sudan's restive West Darfur region, the United Nations said Wednesday.
U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said the ambush on a United Nations-African Union peacekeeping patrol in El-Geneina took place Tuesday evening.
The U.N. Security Council late Wednesday condemned the attack "in the strongest terms" and called on all parties in Darfur to cooperate with the peacekeeping mission.
Nesirky said the secretary-general "is appalled and deeply saddened" by the latest attack on peacekeepers in Darfur.
The Security Council and the secretary-general urged Sudanese government to swiftly investigate the incident and bring the perpetrators to justice.
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"They were killed last night some 2 km (1.2 miles) from our regional headquarters in El Geneina. They came under fire from all sides," a spokesman for UNAMID said.
UNAMID, the world's largest peacekeeping mission, was deployed by the United Nations and the African Union in the arid western territory after fierce fighting in 2003 which forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee their homes.
A total of 42 peacekeepers have been killed since UNAMID was set up, according to the force.
Violence in Darfur, where mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum, has ebbed from a 2003-04 peak but international efforts to broker peace have failed to end the conflict.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-sudan-darfurbre8920pp-20121003,0,7840124.story
