LONDON (AFP) – An Irish aid worker has been kidnapped in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin confirmed Friday.
“An Irish citizen has been kidnapped in the region,” the spokeswoman said, after a source told AFP that two aid workers, one from Ireland and one from Uganda, had been taken by armed men from an office of Irish NGO Goal.
“We don’t have an embassy in the region but we have an honorary consul and he is actively pursuing the case.
“The embassy in Cairo is liasing with the UN mission on the ground and the British embassy in Khartoum.”
Goal’s Irish office was not immediately contactable. The source said that armed men had come to its office at Kutum in northern Darfur.
A UN official also confirmed the kidnapping.
It was the third kidnapping of foreign humanitarian workers in Darfur since a March 4 arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court against Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir for alleged war crimes in Darfur.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died and 2.7 million have fled their homes since ethnic minority rebels in Darfur rose up against the Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum in February 2003.
Sudan’s government says 10,000 have been killed.
حركة العدل و المساواة السودانية
موقع متخصص بنقل آخر الأخبار و البيانات و القرارات لحركة العدل و المساواة السودانية