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KHARTOUM - A Nigerian UN peacekeeper was killed when up to 60 gunmen ambushed a patrol team in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur, a UN spokesman said yesterday.
The sergeant died when 40 to 60 gunmen ambushed a patrol team from the joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission north of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur state, at around 5 pm (1300 GMT) on Monday, Kemal Saiki said.
His death brings to 10 the number of UN peacekeepers killed in hostile incidents since the launch of the joint mission on December 31.
“About 75 kilometres (47 miles) north of Nyala, they came into an ambush by unknown armed attackers. They were fired at. They replied,” Saiki told AFP by telephone from Darfur.
“The attackers withdrew but in this firefight we had one of our peacekeepers wounded.
We arranged for him to be evacuated by helicopter but he died before he could be evacuated,” added Saiki.
The spokesman said one assailant was wounded, captured and handed over to police but that there was no information on the identity of the attackers or their motivation.
The ambush came on the same day that the new head of UN peacekeeping arrived in Sudan, the biggest country in Africa, for a week-long tour.
Alain Le Roy was on Tuesday due to visit Abyei, the flashpoint town devastated by fighting in May that threatened to re-ignite a north-south civil war which ended with a comprehensive peace agreement in 2005.
Le Roy is scheduled to visit Darfur on Thursday.
The Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum and state-backed militias.
Since then, the conflict has disintegrated into a maze of fraying rebel groups, banditry, tribal conflict and flip-flopping militias.
The United Nations has said 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million have been displaced. Khartoum puts the number of dead at 10,000.
Seven UNAMID peacekeepers died and 22 were wounded on July 8, 2008 the deadliest single ambush by heavily armed militia since the United Nations assumed command of peacekeeping in Darfur.
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