Sudan Shootout Kills 7 Peacekeepers

Hundreds of heavily armed fighters riding horses and SUVs launched a brazen attack on a U.N.-African Union patrol in Darfur, killing seven peacekeepers and wounding nearly a dozen others, the U.N. said Wednesday.

The ambush was the deadliest attack on the international mission since it deployed this year and highlighted the vulnerability of the short-staffed and under-equipped force.

About 200 gunmen on horseback and in SUVs mounted with anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons exchanged gunfire for more than two hours on Tuesday with the peacekeeping force that included 61 soldiers from Rwanda, the U.N. said.

Five Rwandan soldiers and two police officers, one from Ghana, the other from Uganda, were killed. Twenty-two peacekeepers were wounded, including at seven who were in serious condition, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's said.

"We are outraged by the attack," Shereen Zorba, deputy spokeswoman of the U.N.-AU mission known as UNAMID, told The Associated Press. "We are not part of the conflict, but a tool to alleviate the suffering of civilians. We try to establish some level of peace and security in the ground. But to drag us in to be part of the conflict is unjustifiable."

Hindered by a lack of crucial equipment, including attack helicopters, the joint force, has struggled to fulfill its mission since deploying in January with about 9,000 soldiers and police officers.

The force is authorized to have 26,000 members, but it is faced with chronic shortages of staff and equipment and less-than-adequate cooperation from the Sudanese government.

The U.N.-AU peacekeepers mostly patrol, help protect civilians without weapons in the many camps of displaced Darfurians and mediate between fighting factions. But they often have little access to wide swaths of the remote western Sudanese region, roughly the size of France.

The peacekeeping force has been unable to persuade the U.S. and other governments to supply attack and transport helicopters, surveillance aircraft, military engineers and logistical support it needs to safely navigate Darfur.

On Tuesday, the unit was on its way back to its camp in Shangil Tobaya after investigating the recent slayings of two rebels affiliated with the Sudan Liberation Army when the ambushed occurred near the village of Umm Hakibah, about 60 miles southeast of the North Darfur capital, El Fasher, Zorba said.

"The U.N. Secretary General condemns in the strongest possible terms this unacceptable act of extreme violence" against peacekeepers, Ban's spokeswoman, Michele Montas, said at U.N. headquarters in New York.

The U.N. rarely explicitly blames one of the warring factions for Darfur's violence, and Zorba declined to say who was behind Tuesday's attack.

But the description that the gunmen were on horseback strongly suggests they belong to the janjaweed militia of pro-government Arab nomads.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ali Sadiq said 13 people were killed in the attack, but he was uncertain how many of those were gunmen. He accused a splinter group of the rebel Sudan's Liberation Army-Unity faction for the attack and blamed European countries for not putting enough pressure on rebel leaders to stop Darfur violence.

"Most of these rebel leaders live in Europe, but the international community is lax and easy with these rebels and this encourages them to attack peacekeeping forces," he told the AP by phone from Khartoum.

The Darfur conflict has claimed up to 300,000 lives and uprooted 2.5 million people since ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003. Critics accuse Sudan of arming janjaweed Arab militias that have terrorized Darfur villages - a charge Khartoum denies.

The U.N. and AU have tried for months to open new peace talks between Sudan and rebel groups, which have splintered into more than two dozen factions, following the failure of a 2005 agreement to stem violence. But most rebel chiefs are boycotting the negotiations.

Initially, African Union peacekeepers were deployed to patrol Darfur. But constant staff and equipment shortages left them ill-prepared to fend off attacks. In October, 10 AU peacekeepers were killed in an ambush on a military base in Haskanita in northern Darfur. Rebels were blamed for that attack.

The joint U.N.-AU force was meant to beef up security in Darfur, but banditry and other violence against both peacekeepers and civilians continue. There have been at least seven attacks on the joint force over the past six months.

Last month, four U.N.-AU staffers were assaulted and held at gunpoint in Darfur. One of the staffers was stripped of his belongings, kidnapped briefly and then released by Arab militiamen on horseback, according to a statement from the joint force.

In May, an Ugandan officer was found fatally shot in a vehicle operated by the UNAMID force in North Darfur - the first U.N.-AU peacekeeper killed since the mission deployed. UNAMID had described the killing as "an act of cold blooded murder."

U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno has said there was an alarming increase in violence in the Darfur, which also spread recently to the capital Khartoum and said it could escalate further.

Earlier this year, the U.N. said suffering in Darfur has worsened, forcing tens of thousands of people to be uprooted from their homes. The U.N. World Food Program said it had to cut food rations because of increasing banditry against its drivers in the region.

One key stumbling block to the U.N.-AU force has been the Sudanese government's reluctance to allow non-African troops into the region. The UNAMID commander said an agreement between Ban and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on this issue was crucial to securing Darfur.

Nigerian Gen. Martin Agwai has said he hoped the force would grow to 13,000 over the next few months - with Egyptian, Ethiopian, Thai and Nepalese troops added. He also has expressed optimism the force could reach its goal of 80 percent of the full deployment by year's end.