The European Union has condemned the deadly attack on peacekeepers from the African Union-U.N. Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) in Sudan's western Darfur region, and urged authorities in the African nation to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.
Four peacekeepers from Nigeria were killed and eight of their colleagues injured when a UNAMID patrol party came under attack at El Geneina in Darfur region on Tuesday evening.
In a statement on Thursday, EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton condemned the deadly attack and expressed her deep concerns about the "recent increase in serious security incidents in Darfur."
She called on the Sudanese government to work closely with UNAMID to bring the perpetrators to justice and offered her sincere condolences to the relatives and colleagues of the victims.
Ashton said she was also "deeply alarmed at reports of a violent incident in Hashaba in North Darfur, which appears to have cost the lives of large numbers of civilians, including through aerial bombardment."
She called on the Sudanese government to provide UNAMID with immediate access to the area and urged "all parties to end the cycle of violence in Darfur and to pursue a comprehensive and inclusive peace settlement."
International aid workers and UNAMID personnel in Darfur have been the target of frequent attacks and kidnappings in recent years. UNAMID had taken over peacekeeping duties in Darfur from an AU peacekeeping force in December 2007.
The joint AU-U.N. mission is tasked with protecting civilians, promoting an inclusive peace process and helping ensure the safe delivery of humanitarian assistance across Darfur, an arid region on Sudan's western flank. Some 78 UNAMID personnel had been killed, mostly a a result of hostile actions, since the peacekeeping mission began operations under a 2007 U.N. mandate.
The U.N. Security Council (UNSC) in July had extended the mandate of the AU-U.N. mission in Darfur for one more year. The 15-member Council also urged all parties involved in the conflict to end violence and work towards a comprehensive peace settlement.
The UNSC also decided that uniformed personnel serving with the mission will be soon reconfigured "to focus on the areas of Darfur with the highest security threats." Accordingly, it will now be reconfigured in the coming months to include up to 16,200 military personnel, 2,310 policemen and 17 formed police units of up to 140 personnel each.
The move was in line with a recommendation made by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who noted in his recent report that "the reconfigured force, although smaller in number, would be better equipped and more rapidly deployable than at present to address emerging threats to civilians."
According to the U.N., about 300,000 people have been killed and some 2.7 million displaced in the Darfur region after ethnic Africans took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum in 2003 to fight discrimination.
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