China, under international pressure to help end conflict in Darfur, made a rare call on its ally Sudan on Sunday to do more to allow foreign peacekeepers to deploy to the region.
But there was no respite in the fighting and the UN said it feared for thousands of civilians after reports that Sudan's forces bombed a rebel-held area in western Darfur.
China's envoy to Darfur, in a departure from Beijing's usual public diplomatic vagueness, made an unusual rebuke to Khartoum during a visit and urged Sudan to remove obstacles to full deployment of a joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force.
"Rolling out the hybrid peacekeeping operation and resolving the Darfur issue require the joint efforts of all sides," Liu Guijin (
"First, the Sudan government should cooperate better with the international community and demonstrate greater flexibility on some technical issues. Next, anti-government organizations in the Darfur region should return to the negotiating table," he said.
China's role in Sudan has come under renewed attention since film director Steven Spielberg quit as an artistic director to this year's Beijing Olympic games, saying China had failed to use its sway in Khartoum to seek peace in Darfur.
China is a big investor in Sudan's oil industry and is its largest weapons supplier.
International experts estimate that 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been driven from their homes since mostly non-Arab Darfur rebels took up arms five years ago.
Even as the Chinese envoy spoke, powerful Sudanese presidential assistant Nafie Ali Nafie rejected the notion of non-African troops in the UNAMID peacekeeping force until all African soldiers have deployed to Darfur.
Western countries accuse Sudan of using conditions such as the composition of the force as delaying tactics. So far, just 9,000 of an eventual 26,000 peacekeepers are on the ground.
The UN said on Sunday it had received reports of aerial bombing in the Jabel Moun area in western Darfur, a region where Sudan launched an offensive on Feb. 8 to retake rebel-held areas.
"We are gravely concerned for the safety of thousands of civilians in this area," the UN statement said.
Residents say at least 114 people have been killed in the offensive, but the army says many of those were rebels in civilian clothing. Thousands of people have fled the fighting, some into neighboring Chad.
UN officials estimated some 20,000 people were in Jabel Moun. They said the bombing occurred in spite of assurances from Khartoum on Sunday that civilians would be allowed to leave the area. UNAMID was seeking similar assurances from the rebels.
"The risks at this stage to civilians are unacceptably high. The solution for Darfur's problems can never be a military one," the statement said.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), meanwhile, said it had downed a helicopter north of el-Geneina in West Darfur on Sunday. Sudan's army said engine trouble caused the aircraft to crash land. It said the pilot escaped unharmed.
"The pilot tried to go back to el-Geneina when the second engine failed and the helicopter crash landed," the spokesman said, ruling out any rebel involvement.
The delays to deploying the UNAMID force mean it is struggling to live up to the high expectations of Darfuris that it will do better to secure western Sudan than the previous force from only the African Union.
Scandinavian units were refused entry by Khartoum and a Thai battalion is ready but still waiting for permission to deploy.
Mutrif Siddig, a senior Sudanese Foreign Ministry official, said on Sunday that the force had commitments for twice the number of African soldiers needed so that a majority of the troops would be from Africa.
"Now we have 10,000 [troops] already there [in Darfur] and we have in addition two units from Egypt and Ethiopia ready ... other African countries have offered 18 battalions," Siddig said. "That is double the number we need."
Siddig said Sudan would look to East Asian countries if the force needed additional troops.
ANGER: A video shared online showed residents in a neighborhood confronting the national security minister, attempting to drag her toward floodwaters Argentina’s port city of Bahia Blanca has been “destroyed” after being pummeled by a year’s worth of rain in a matter of hours, killing 13 and driving hundreds from their homes, authorities said on Saturday. Two young girls — reportedly aged four and one — were missing after possibly being swept away by floodwaters in the wake of Friday’s storm. The deluge left hospital rooms underwater, turned neighborhoods into islands and cut electricity to swaths of the city. Argentine Minister of National Security Patricia Bullrich said Bahia Blanca was “destroyed.” The death toll rose to 13 on Saturday, up from 10 on Friday, authorities
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
DEBT BREAK: Friedrich Merz has vowed to do ‘whatever it takes’ to free up more money for defense and infrastructure at a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty Germany’s likely next leader Friedrich Merz was set yesterday to defend his unprecedented plans to massively ramp up defense and infrastructure spending in the Bundestag as lawmakers begin debating the proposals. Merz unveiled the plans last week, vowing his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) bloc and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — in talks to form a coalition after last month’s elections — would quickly push them through before the end of the current legislature. Fraying Europe-US ties under US President Donald Trump have fueled calls for Germany, long dependent on the US security umbrella, to quickly
Local officials from Russia’s ruling party have caused controversy by presenting mothers of soldiers killed in Ukraine with gifts of meat grinders, an appliance widely used to describe Russia’s brutal tactics on the front line. The United Russia party in the northern Murmansk region posted photographs on social media showing officials smiling as they visited bereaved mothers with gifts of flowers and boxed meat grinders for International Women’s Day on Saturday, which is widely celebrated in Russia. The post included a message thanking the “dear moms” for their “strength of spirit and the love you put into bringing up your sons.” It
RSS