U.S. and European media

July 8, 2023

Reuters: UN Chief Aims to Complete Darfur Deployment by Dec. The United Nations aims to have its biggest ever peacekeeping force in place in Sudan's Darfur region by end-year, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday. "My target is that by the end of this year we will complete the deployment of the mandated number of 26,000 soldiers," Ban told a parliamentary hearing during a visit to Dublin. "This is by far the largest ever (number of) peacekeepers deployed by the United Nations," Ban added. The United Nations and African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID) took over from a smaller AU mission last year and is well below its promised strength of 26,000 troops, a level which it had earlier aimed to reach by last month.

Reuters: Sudan Pinpoints Location of Abducted Aid Workers. Sudanese security services have pinpointed the area where armed men are holding two abducted female aid workers in Darfur, but have yet to contact the kidnappers, a government minister said on Wednesday. Up to eight men seized the workers for Irish aid group GOAL, one Ugandan and one Irish, from their compound in the north Darfur town of Kutum on Friday -- the third kidnapping of foreigners in the remote western region in four months. "The information that I received this morning is that the area where these people are hiding has been located," Sudan's state minister for humanitarian affairs Abdel Baqi al-Jailani told Reuters. "Still there is no contact, but I am optimistic we will see progress soon." The minister declined to name the area for fear of jeopardising negotiations. He added security forces had also asked local Darfuri leaders to try to persuade the abductors to release the captives.

AFP: Sudan's Truckers Undaunted by Bandits. They risk being robbed or kidnapped, but Sudan's truckers still deliver food aid to thousands displaced by conflict in Darfur, where banditry is often overshadowed by the fighting between army and rebels. "We were delivering food to those displaced and were heading back when armed men blocked the road and stole our truck at gunpoint," said Salim Keydum, a trucker from Kordofan in central Sudan who does the Darfur route. Last year, he was leading a convoy heading from Nyala to El-Fasher, one of Darfur's most dangerous routes, when an armed group stopped his convoy in the town of Manawashi and took him and others hostage for two months. The truck drivers in Darfur are a target of choice for bandits and rebels who steal their vehicles to sell on the black market. While the rare abductions of Western aid workers dominate the headlines, the kidnap of truck drivers often goes unnoticed in the press, despite the numbers.

The Darfur Daily News is a service of the Save Darfur Coalition. To subscribe to the Daily News, please email [email protected]. For media inquiries, please contact Ashley Roberts at (202) 478-6181, or [email protected].