African Media Coverage

January 12, 2023

LIBYA: The Tripoli Post 
“Security Council, Slams Darfur Attack”

The UN Security Council and the United States Wednesday slammed a recent attack on a supply convoy of UN-African Union troops in Darfur as a senior UN official said Sudan admitted responsibility for the incident.

Libya's UN envoy Giadalla Ettalhi, the council chair this month, said after consultations on Monday's attack in west Darfur that all 15 members "made it clear that the attack on

UNAMID (the UN-AU peacekeeping force) was unacceptable and must never happen again."

He added that all members "expressed their condemnation of any aggression on UNAMID or any other peacekeeping forces."

"The United States condemns the January 7 attack by the Sudanese Armed Forces on United Nations peacekeepers who were traveling in a supply convoy in Darfur," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in Washington.

Saying the attack "against peacekeepers in white vehicles clearly displaying UN markings is unacceptable," he said in a statement that it "demonstrates the need for a stronger arms embargo for Sudan."

Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of the UN peacekeeping department, told the council that a Sudanese area commander had confirmed that "a Sudanese armed force unit fired upon a clearly marked UNAMID convoy" in west Darfur.

But earlier Wednesday, Sudan's UN envoy Abdalmahmood Mohamad instead blamed Chad-backed rebels for Monday's attack.

He pointed the finger at Darfur rebels of the Sudanese Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) which he claimed was strongly supported by the Chadian government.
The council was expected to adopt a US-drafted statement formally condemning the attack.

Guehenno said the "disturbing" attack showed that the Darfur situation was "very volatile, very dangerous" and that "that we need strong capacities that we do not have."
UNAMID, which took over from an African Union mission on January 1, did not return fire or sustain troop casualties in the attack, and said it was investigating the incident jointly with Sudan.

"If we had had helicopters capable of flying at night and quickly reinforcing a convoy under attack, of course we would have been in a position to deter, probably the attack would never have occurred," Guehenno said.

He renewed his plea to member states to provide 24 crucial transport and light attack helicopters for UNAMID and for Khartoum to end its apparent foot-dragging in approving key non-African contingents for the force. The UN official said Khartoum had formally rejected assigning a Scandinavian engineering unit to UNAMID and had yet to approve a Thai infantry battalion and two Nepalese special forces contingents.

Wednesday, Sweden and Norway said they had withdrawn their offer to contribute 400 troops for the Scandinavian engineering unit which was to have helped build up Darfur's infrastructure in the early stages of the mission.

When fully deployed, UNAMID is to become the UN's largest peacekeeping operation with 20,000 troops and 6,000 police and civilian personnel.

But only around 9,000 troops and police are currently in place.

Guehenno also said UN chief Ban Ki-moon discussed technical hurdles with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir over the weekend and that the two leaders would continue their discussions at the AU summit in Addis Ababa later this month.