Reports of new massacre in Darfur investigated
NAIROBI, Kenya - African Union and United Nations officials are looking into reports of a new massacre in Darfur, in which witnesses said that Sudanese government troops and their allied militias killed more than 30 civilians, slitting the throats of several men praying at a mosque and shooting a 5-year-old boy in the back as he tried to run away.
According to several residents of Muhagiriya, a small town in southern Darfur, two columns of uniformed government troops, along with dozens of militiamen not in uniform, surrounded the town around noon on Oct. 8 and stormed the market.
Muhagiriya was a stronghold of one of Darfur's many rebel factions, but witnesses said that there were few rebels there at the time and that government forces turned their guns - and knives - on civilians.
Both the UN and the African Union said that dozens of civilians had been killed and that witnesses consistently identified the attackers as government soldiers and allied gunmen.
However, neither entity said it could independently verify who was responsible.
The Sudanese government denied any involvement, but witnesses said uniformed troops methodically mowed down anyone who tried to escape, including a group of fleeing children.
"The youngest child, a 5-year-old boy, I knew well," said Sultan Marko Niaw, a tribal elder, who also spoke by phone. He said the boy's name was Guran Avium. "A soldier had shot him in the back," he said.
The Sudanese government has consistently denied accusations that its forces have raided villages and killed villagers, and Muhagiriya was no exception.
"That's completely false information," said Mohamed M. Salih, an official in the governor's office of South Darfur, when asked about the massacre reports. "This was internal fighting between the movements."
Thousands of people have fled Muhagiriya and are now camped around a small African Union peacekeeping base for their protection.
The UN sent an assessment team to Muhagiriya last week to take photographs of the destruction and interview villagers about the attack.
All the internally displaced persons "believe it was a joint government-militia operation," said Radhia Achouri, a UN spokeswoman. "But we can't independently confirm that."
She said that the UN team was looking into human rights and civilian protection issues but that their job was not to investigate "who did what." 