Three peacekeepers in Sudan killed by gunmen

December 6, 2009 According to a spokesman for UNAMID, a peacekeeping force in Darfur, Sudan, three Rwandan soldiers were killed by gunmen in an ambush earlier today. Two other soldiers were hurt.

The spokesman, Kemal Saiki, commented that the ambush occurred close to a government checkpoint in the town of Saraf Umra, near Darfur. The peacekeeping troops returned fire at the gunmen, wounding one, but they evaded capture. The identities of the assailants was not immediately known.

Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, released a statement in which he expressed his sympathy to the families of the killed soldiers.

With this incident, twenty peacekeepers have been killed in the Darfur region since January 2008, when the African Union and the UN dispatched armed forces to the region. Violence, however, has become less frequent in the past few months.