The Darfur Blog: 2008

August 27th, 2008 - OurPledge.org (AADG)  Permalink   Comments

Sudan tightens grip on Darfur camp

August 26, 2008

KHARTOUM (AFP) — Sudan boosted forces outside a volatile camp for displaced people in Darfur on Tuesday, sparking fears of new armed clashes as residents prepared to bury dozens of dead from fighting a day earlier.

Police moved into the impoverished and volatile Kalma in South Darfur on Monday. Casualty figures from subsequent clashes are impossible to verify, but residents have asked UN troops for burial shrouds and protection for funerals.

“It seems last night there was a build-up of security forces around the camp,” one UN official told AFP.

A Kalma community leader, Adam Mohamed, told AFP by telephone on Tuesday that more security vehicles had surrounded the camp, where conditions for the 80,000 residents were miserable and homes had been washed away by rain.

He said the death toll had climbed to 52 and that bodies were being buried at a cemetery inside the camp.

Government security officers described Kalma, which one aid worker said was the size of a small city, as a den of outlaws, armed robbers and rebel movements hoarding weapons, ammunition, explosives, narcotics and stolen goods.

“The police force will remain in its place until it enters the camp to collect the stockpiled weapons and prevent the rebels from getting inside the camp,” state media quoted the South Darfur security committee as saying.

Five policemen and seven Kalma residents were wounded when gunmen inside the camp opened fire “compelling” police to respond, the committee said.

But Ahmed Abdel Shafie, a commander in the nebulous Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) that first rebelled against the government in 2003, said the death toll from Monday’s shooting had risen from 27 to 36.

They included at least five women and two children, he said.

“The situation is very bad. The people are really suffering,” he told AFP by telephone from Darfur in west Sudan. The people, who live in mud and straw huts, lacked medication and were having to cope with heavy rain, he said.

The joint African Union-United Nations peacekeeping mission in Darfur said it had identified 11 bodies as of Tuesday afternoon.

Internally displaced persons (IDPs) said 24 bodies were still lying in the camp and urged the United Nations to provide security for funerals and the white sheets needed to comply with Muslim ritual.

A spokesman for another faction of the SLA said 22 local leaders in the camp had been arrested but could provide no further details.

The United States, which has strained relations with Khartoum, has criticised Sudan over the incursion and called for a full investigation.

The violence overshadowed the first working day in Sudan of Djibril Bassole, the new international mediator trying to find a political solution in Darfur, who held talks with presidential advisor Mustafa Osman Ismail.

“The first impression I have is that the Sudanese want peace… Of course it isn’t easy. Certain events complicate the task enormously,” he told reporters, without explicityly mentioning Kalma.

UNAMID said it had evacuated 49 wounded IDPs, mostly women and children, to hospital in the nearby town of Nyala overnight.

International charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, which runs a clinic in Kalma, said it was trying to regain access to the camp, as UN-led peacekeepers were locked in talks over how to find a long-term solution to Kalma.

“The government of southern Darfur is asking us to organise a meeting with IDP representatives to find a lasting solution but in the meantime we have been encouraging the IDPs to surrender their weapons voluntarily,” UNAMID spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.

UNAMID has struggled to provide security in Darfur with just over a third of the 26,000 troops they have been promised.

Darfur tensions have heightened in Sudan since the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court last month formally asked judges to issue an arrest warrant for President Omar al-Beshir.

The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since the conflict erupted in February 2003. Sudan says 10,000 have been killed.

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