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7 Die In Brazen Attack On Peacekeepers With Darfur Mission

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The Associated Press

Published: July 10, 2008

KHARTOUM, Sudan - About 200 gunmen on horseback and in SUVs launched a brazen attack on international peacekeepers in Darfur, killing seven in the deadliest strike against the under-equipped and understaffed mission since it deployed, the United Nations said Wednesday.

Twenty-two members of the U.N.-African Union force were wounded in the fierce two-hour gunbattle Tuesday by militants who outnumbered them nearly three-to-one.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon's office said the joint military and police patrol was investigating the killing of civilians in North Darfur state when it was ambushed by militants driving vehicles armed with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons.

Five Rwandan soldiers and two police officers, one from Ghana and the other from Uganda, were killed.

"We are outraged by the attack," said Shereen Zorba, deputy spokeswoman of the U.N.-AU mission.

"We are not part of the conflict, but a tool to alleviate the suffering of civilians. We try to establish some level of peace and security in the ground. But to drag us in to be part of the conflict is unjustifiable."

Hindered by a lack of crucial equipment, including attack helicopters, the joint U.N.-AU force has struggled to fulfill its mission since deploying Jan. 1 with about 9,000 soldiers and police officers.

The force is authorized to have 26,000 members, but it is faced with chronic shortages of staff and equipment.

The peacekeepers mostly patrol the war-torn Darfur region, helping protect unarmed civilians in the many camps of the displaced and mediate between fighting factions. They often have little access to wide swaths of the remote western Sudanese area, roughly the size of France.

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