A UN military officer deployed to Sudan's war-ravaged Darfur region to support African Union peacekeepers has been killed by robbers at his residence in el-Fasher, an African Union spokesman said on Saturday.
The death came as Sudan said it would consider a plan for a Darfur hybrid peacekeeping force endorsed by the UN Security Council on Friday that calls for more than 23,000 troops and police to protect civilians and use force to deter violence. The Egyptian foreign ministry named him in a statement as Lieutenant Colonel Ihab Ahmed, a military observer, and said unidentified "armed elements" had killed him.
The African Union spokesman said he was part of a United Nations light support package to assist roughly 7,000 African Union peacekeepers trying to quell violence in Sudan's west. "The robbers entered the house, shot the officer and took some property," AU spokesman Noureddine Mezni said.
Mezni said the Egyptian officer was shot and wounded on Friday and died on Saturday. He was killed at a house used by UN personnel working with AU peacekeepers near AU force headquarters in Darfur's main town el-Fasher. The United Nations says more than 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur and 2 million driven from their homes since ethnic and political conflict flared in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government, complaining of neglect.
Khartoum puts the number of dead at roughly 9,000. Mezni said initial reports indicated the killing was a criminal act but investigations were still ongoing. The acting head of the African Union mission in Sudan, Monique Mukaruliza, "expressed her shock and condemned the killing in the strongest terms", Mezni said.