Twenty-nine people were reported killed in an unprecedented attack on a refugee camp in the northwest of the Sudan region of Darfur, the United Nations said on Thursday.The UN can't even protect those in the refugee camps. And yet there are those who think that the UN is the last, best hope for world peace, nuclear nonproliferation, and making the world safe from democracy [threw that last bit in to see if you were still paying attention].
According to initial reports, the Aro Sharow camp was attacked by 250 to 300 "armed Arab men on horses and camels" late on Wednesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said in a statement.
Another 10 people were reported to have been seriously wounded and the nearby village of Gosmeina was also believed to have been attacked and burned, the agency said. The death toll referred only to camp dwellers.
The camp, home to between 4,000 and 5,000 people, lies 16 kilometers (10 miles) north of the town of Saleah in an area that has been regarded as a no-go zone for the U.N. for months because of continuing violence.
Nevertheless, this was the first time that a camp had been attacked since fighting broke out in the vast Sudanese region over two years ago forcing hundreds of thousands to flee to the makeshift settlements, the UNHCR said.
The U.N. has warned that it may have to suspend aid operations in Darfur because of a resurgence in violence.
This isn't exactly an unprecedented attack. The UN has sat idly by as genocidal thugs killed hundreds of thousands of people in Rwanda. They've sat by while the Janjaweed and Sudanese militias have targeted Sudanese refugees.
Now, they're going to tuck tail and run because of the violence. This is precisely the kind of situation on which they should be taking decisive action to stop the Janjaweed, not accepting the violence and getting out of the way - only to return to do a body-count.
Shameful. Again.
Technorati: Amnesty International, Sudan, UN, Dafur, and Kofi Annan.
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