Khartoum: One international peacekeeper was killed and three others wounded in Sudan when gunmen ambushed their patrol in the troubled Darfur region on Saturday, UNAMID peacekeepers said.
The Western region is the scene of an almost decade-long insurgency by non-Arab tribes against the government in Khartoum, which they accuse of political and economic marginalisation.
Unknown gunmen attacked the patrol near El Daein in South Darfur and killed one peacekeeper, a spokesman for the joint African Union/UN Mission UNAMID said.
Two of the wounded peacekeepers were in critical condition, he said, without giving the nationalities of the peacekeepers.
The United Nations has said as many as 300,000 people may have died in Darfur, where Khartoum has mobilised troops and mostly Arab militias to crush the uprising. Khartoum puts the death toll at 10,000.
Qatar brokered a peace deal which Sudan signed this year with the Liberation and Justice Movement (LJM), an umbrella association of smaller groups. But major other rebel groups have refused to sign the document.
In November, Darfur's main insurgent groups and rebels in two border states said they had formed an alliance to topple Bashir.
Bureau Report
First Published: Sunday, January 22, 2012, 09:59