Free Republic

KHARTOUM (AFP) - Gunmen have attacked police from the African Union and UN peacekeeping force in Darfur for the first time, injuring one officer by beating him with a rifle butt, a UN spokesman said Thursday. "Four gunmen attacked, yesterday afternoon, a UNAMID police patrol, two kilometres (one mile) from the Zam Zam camp for internally displaced persons, injuring one officer," said spokesman Noureddine Mezni from the UN African Mission in Darfur. The unarmed police were stopped at gunpoint as they returned from a routine patrol at the camp, which is near Darfur's political capital of Al-Fasher. The officers were...

NEW YORK — The U.N. Security Council yesterday authorized a new peacekeeping mission for Darfur, a complex military effort with 26,000 African and U.N. forces under a single command that will be the largest ever attempted by the world body. The resolution setting up the mission also calls for an immediate cease-fire in the Darfur region of Western Sudan and sets a timetable for the force to be fully deployed by early 2008. No U.S. troops will participate directly in the mission, but they likely will help move troops and materiel. "We call in particular on [Sudanese] President [Omar] Bashir...

Security Council Approves 26,000-Strong Peacekeeping Force to Help End Darfur Bloodshed 07-31-2007 4:22 PM By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer UNITED NATIONS (Associated Press) -- The U.N. Security Council approved a 26,000-strong peacekeeping force for Darfur on Tuesday to try to help end four years of fighting that has killed more than 200,000 people in the conflict-wracked Sudanese region. The force _ the first joint peacekeeping mission by the African Union and the United Nations _ will replace the beleaguered 7,000-strong AU force now on the ground in Darfur no later than Dec. 31. The council urged that the...