KHARTOUM: Three foreign staff with an international aid agency are being held by kidnappers in Darfur, officials said yesterday, underscoring mounting security fears in Sudan following the arrest warrant issued against President Omar Bashir.
A French, a Canadian and an Italian were among five employees of the Belgian branch of Medicins sans Frontieres who were kidnapped at gunpoint on Wednesday night from their office in North Darfur, not far from the Chad border.
“Medecins Sans Frontieres confirms the abduction last night, of three international volunteers in Saraf Umra, in the Sudanese province of North Darfur. Two Sudanese personnel, captured at the same time, were quickly released,” said a statement issued in Brussels.
“The three international volunteers, a Canadian nurse, an Italian doctor and a French official, work for the Belgian section of MSF.”
In Rome, the Foreign Ministry confirmed that an Italian was among those seized in the attack, which came after warnings from the United Nations and the United States about security problems in Sudan and Darfur itself.
The French and Dutch branches of MSF (Doctors Without Borders) were among 13 groups kicked out last week after the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for Bashir for war crimes over the six-year conflict in Darfur.
The Sudanese government accuse the aid groups of cooperating with the ICC, which accuses Bashir of orchestrating a campaign of murder, torture, rape, forcible displacement and pillage in the vast largely desert western region.
More than 180 foreign aid workers have since left Sudan, according to the United Nations, which has warned that hundreds of thousands of aid-dependent people were being put at risk.
US President Barack Obama warned on Tuesday that the expulsions were “not acceptable,” saying: “We have a potential crisis of even greater dimensions than we already saw.”
Sudan’s UN envoy said on Wednesday his government was willing to allow any “well-meaning” aid agencies in but that the expulsion order last week was “irreversible.”
On Tuesday, the US Embassy in Khartoum said it was allowing non-essential staff to leave Sudan and had introduced “heightened security measures” after receiving information of “terrorist threats” aimed at Western interests in the country.
Americans were also advised to defer all travel to Sudan “due to uncertain security conditions following the expulsion of NGOs as well as harassment of humanitarian aid workers, employees of non-governmental organizations, and Westerners in general.”
Sudanese army jeeps blocked roads leading to the French Embassy in Khartoum on Tuesday and troops secured a perimeter around the mission after a Sudanese newspaper reported that militant groups had vowed suicide attacks against French, as well as British and US interests.
According to the World Food Program, four of its partner relief agencies — Action Against Hunger, Save the Children USA, Solidarites and Care International which were expelled — took care of 35 percent of its food distribution in Darfur.
The United Nations says about 300,000 people have died in Darfur from the combined results of war, famine and disease after ethnic rebels rebelled against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government in Darfur, complaining of discrimination.
Another 2.7 million have been displaced.
