KHARTOUM (AFP) — A Sudanese man working for a Canadian aid group has been shot dead in Darfur, the latest act of violence against embattled relief workers in the war-ravaged region, a relief official said on Tuesday.
"He was ambushed on Saturday by men who wanted his Thuraya satellite telephone," Mark Simmons, country director for the Fellowship for African Relief, told AFP.
"They came to his home on Monday evening to take the phone, but it wasn't there. The armed men then opened fire on him."
Simmons said the attack took place in west Darfur, near the border with Chad.
"We've been in Sudan for 24 years and this is the first time that one of our workers is killed," he said.
An official with UN peacekeepers in Darfur said the killing appeared to be a botched robbery.
The attack came after Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir, accused by the International Criminal Court of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur, expelled 13 foreign relief agencies earlier this month.
Beshir has stepped up his defiance of the West since the ICC issued an arrest warrant for him on March 4, vowing to expel foreign aid groups and to replace them with Sudanese organisations.
In February, two Sudanese workers with a French relief group were killed and four were wounded in an attack by armed men on horseback in Darfur.
Four workers with Doctors Without Borders (MSF), three of them foreigners, were kidnapped at gunpoint from their Darfur home on March 11.
They were all released four days later, with no signs of violence or ransom payment, according to Sudanese and MSF officials.
The abduction was the first of international aid workers since the beginning of the civil war in Darfur in 2003 and took place just 10 days after the ICC issued the arrest warrant for Beshir.
The United Nations has warned that the expulsions would have a severe impact on aid distribution in the vast region, which is the size of France and relies heavily on food, health and water services provided by relief agencies.
The United Nations says 300,000 people have died in the six-year conflict between ethnic minority rebels and the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum, which puts the figure at only 10,000. An estimated 2.7 million people have fled their homes.
FAR employs 200 Sudanese and eight international staff, with an annual budget of six million dollars, according to its website.
FAR's mission is to "facilitate the holistic transformation of vulnerable communities in Sudan and to enable them to address and overcome the root causes of poverty," the website says.
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