Sudanese Troops In Battle At Darfur Refugee Camp

[Rage for Order]

Source: AP via Yahoo

Sudanese government forces attacked one of Darfur's largest refugee camps at dawn Monday, killing dozens of civilians, according to rebels and a witness in the camp. Sudan's military acknowledged a firefight, but said shooting began when soldiers tried to raid the camp to search for smuggled weapons. It put the number of casualties at 12, including five soldiers.

The U.N. did not provide a death toll. But a resident of the camp, Mandela Abdullah Mohammed, told The Associated Press by telephone that he counted 32 bodies, including several women and children.

More than 50 vehicles "packed with armed men wearing police and security forces' uniforms ... hit us with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns," Mohammed said.

In a subsequent statement carried by the official SUNA news agency, the government said troops entered because of a persistent state of lawlessness in the camp and reports of huge arms shipments. "Sudanese forces faced huge resistance with a large number of citizens blocking the entry of the forces with barricades. Civilians were brought into the streets as human shields," the statement said, adding that seven civilians and five soldiers were hit in the ensuing gunbattle. It did not specify if any were killed.

The assault comes as Sudan's president faces genocide charges for alleged government-backed attacks on ethnic Africans in the country's troubled western region. Up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.5 million have been displaced since a rebellion began in Darfur in 2003.

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080825/ap_on_re_mi_ea/sudan_darfur

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More at the link. This is just sickening. Expect the UN to issue a strongly worded memo in the coming days. That'll certainly put a stop to this type of thing.