U.S. and European Media

November 7, 2022

Reuters: Darfuri Attack Victims Receive First Aid After a Month. International aid workers have delivered the first assistance to Darfuris who fled their southeast Darfur town last month after a massive attack on African Union peacekeepers, aid officials said on Tuesday. The International Committee for the Red Cross said many civilians who fled fighting in Haskanita town have been surviving under trees with no shelter. African Union soldiers abandoned their base near Haskanita town, south east Darfur after an attack blamed on rebels on September 30 that killed 10 AU soldiers and injured a dozen more. The town was left under government control. A week later U.N. officials confirmed Haskanita town had been razed and all the inhabitants were gone. The army said a fire in the market had caused the destruction.The ICRC said during a 10-day mission they had distributed aid and repaired five water sources for 15,000 people -- 5,560 who were displaced and those living in the nearby villages who were supporting some of the victims."This distribution is the first aid these dispossessed families have received since they had to leave Haskanita a month ago," said Daniel Muñoz-Rojas, an ICRC official in Sudan.

Agence France-Presse: Mbeki calls for rapid deployment of hybrid force in Darfur. South African President Thabo Mbeki called Tuesday for a rapid deployment of the long-awaited AU-UN hybrid force in Darfur after meeting with Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir. He continued, "all outstanding issues in this regard should be solved as a matter of urgency on the basis of existing United Nations decisions and by agreement between the AU, the UN and the government of Sudan. All necessary steps should be taken to ensure the security of the civilian population and the internally displaced people in Darfur, as well as create the conditions for humanitarian assistance to reach the sections of the population in need." Mbeki's call came after a three hour meeting with Beshir during which the Sudanese leader is believed to have asked South Africa to add to its 600 troops in the troubled western region when a beefed up peacekeeping mission begins operations. Beshir's top advisor, Mustafa Osman Ismail, said earlier they were looking at increasing the 7,000 African troops to up to 26,000.

Associated Press: Sudan president stresses commitment to peace in south and in Darfur. Sudan's president, long accused by the West of fomenting strife that has killed hundreds of thousands, says he is committed to peace both in the south of the country and the western province of Darfur. Omar al-Bashir said his government was determined to implement both the "letter and spirit" of a 2005 peace agreement that ended a 21-year war in southern Sudan and would overcome differences with the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which represents the Christian and animist south and which recently walked out of the national unity government. "We would like to assure you that there will be no return to war whatever the differences are between the parties," al-Bashir told guests Tuesday at a banquet thrown by his host, South African President Thabo Mbeki. There are fears that if conflict erupts again in southern Sudan — where 2 million people died in the civil war — it will make it even harder to find a solution in Darfur. He said he hoped that negotiations on Darfur would end in agreement "with all the fighting factions based on justice and fair division of power." 

Agence France-Presse: UN, AU mediators meet Darfur rebels. United Nations and African Union mediators met on Tuesday with key rebel chiefs in Darfur in a bid to persuade them to join peace talks with the Sudan government, a rebel leader said. "We are examining ways of emerging from the tunnel," one of the leaders of the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr, told AFP by telephone. He spoke as UN and AU officials met rebel leaders at an unspecified location in the troubled Darfur region of western Sudan, days after rebel groups boycotted peace talks launched in the Libyan resort of Sirte. "In order to emerge from the tunnel... negotiations should be limited to include only our movement and the Sudan Liberation Movement/Army on one side, and the Khartoum government on the other side." The UN and UA have sought to make contact with rebel factions that boycotted the Sirte peace talks in an effort to begin new negotiations next month.

Agence France-Presse: Darfur rebels waiting for UN before freeing oil workers. A Darfur rebel group said on Tuesday it was waiting for a United Nations mission to arrive so it can free five oil workers kidnapped last month in the neighbouring Kordofan region. “We are still waiting for the people from the UN," said Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr, from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Ashr had said on Sunday that the movement's leader Khalil Ibrahim had ordered the five to be released at the request of the Egyptian government. The rebels had previously made the hostages' release conditional on their employers' withdrawal from working with the Khartoum government to develop Sudan's oil resources.

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