Militia’s Attack on Sudanese Village Is Called the Worst Since January

More than 350 armed militiamen destroyed a village in Sudan’s conflict-racked Darfur region in the worst attack since January, the United Nations and the African Union said Friday.

According to a joint statement issued by the top U.N. envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk, and the top AU envoy, Baba Gana Kingibe, the militiamen “rampaged through the village killing, burning and destroying everything in their paths and leaving in their wake total destruction, with only the mosque and the school spared.”

The statement did not give casualty figures but said the attack was the most savage since the sacking of the Darfur village of Hamada in January, which killed about 100 people.

The organizations expressed “utter shock and disbelief” at Thursday’s daylong attack on the village of Khor Abeche by armed militia from the Miseriyya tribe under the command of Nasir Tijani Adel Kaadir.

The statement said the incident would be reviewed by a U.N. Security Council committee charged with deciding which Sudanese are thwarting peace efforts and should be subject to a travel ban and asset freeze.

On March 31, the council also voted to refer cases of alleged rape, murder, village burnings and other atrocities to the International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. On Tuesday, the United Nations handed prosecutors from the tribunal thousands of documents and a sealed list of 51 people to be investigated for alleged war crimes in Darfur.