Four South African police advisors serving with UN-AU force in Darfur are missing

Four police advisors missing in Darfur

UNITED NATIONS — Four South African police advisors serving with the international peacekeeping force in Darfur are missing, the force said late Wednesday.

The unarmed advisors — two women and two men — have not been heard from since 4 p.m. local time on Sunday shortly after they left their team site outside Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, on a 4 mile (7 kilometer) trip back to their private quarters, the joint United Nations-African Union force known as UNAMID said in a statement.

“Despite an all-out effort on every front, the peacekeepers and their vehicle remain unaccounted for,” UNAMID’s Joint Special Representative Ibrahim Gambari said in a statement.

“Our concern is that that we are now facing a carjacking and abduction situation,” he said.

Gambari dismissed media reports that UNAMID had been contacted with any demands.

UNAMID said it has mobilized all its resources in the region and is working in close cooperation with the Sudanese government and local authorities in the search for the missing peacekeepers, who were not identified.

The Darfur conflict began in February 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Sudanese government in Khartoum, claiming discrimination and neglect. Khartoum is accused of retaliating by arming local nomadic Arab tribes and unleashing militias on civilian populations — a charge the government denies.

U.N. officials say at least 300,000 people have lost their lives from violence, disease and displacement, and 2.7 million have been driven from their homes.

While the number of people dying because of the Darfur conflict has diminished, crime has not.

Last year, two international staff members working for UNAMID, two international aid workers, and a staff member for an international aid organization were abducted.

In a report in late November, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the incidents of hostage taking of international workers “a new and deeply troubling development in Darfur, with the potential to undermine the efforts of the international community.”

These incidents, as well as ambushes, carjackings and violent robberies of staff residences “underscore the extremely difficult and volatile conditions” in which UNAMID and humanitarian workers are working, Ban said.