UN road movement has been suspended on the route between two of the main towns in West Darfur after armed men yesterday fired at a clearly marked UN truck and looted all the personal belongings of the driver and passengers, says UN news report Feb 3.
Also, in North Darfur, UNAMIS said it had received reports that armed tribesmen had attacked a camp containing members of the rebel SLA and that the SLA had stopped a bus north of El Fasher and abducted four passengers, killing three.
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10,000+ troops proposed for UN peace-support mission for South Sudan
Kofi Annan today formally recommends in a report a deployment of 10,130 military troops and up to 755 civilian police with Chapter VI mandate for southern Sudan. And he voices concern that, despite appeals to at least 100 nations, the UN "has received a very limited number of responses." So far there are enough commitments to meet only the first phase of the planned deployment.
Jan Pronk is expected to brief the Council tomorrow on the contents of Mr Annan's report.
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Call for probe into sexually explicit jokes about Mbeki
On a lighter note, South African Broadcasting Corporation Feb 3 says the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) has called for the National Intelligence Agency and forensic auditors to assist with an internal investigation that some ICD officials are allegedly circulating sexually explicit jokes about President Thabo Mbeki on the organisation's internal email.
Karen McKenzie, the ICD executive director, says a full report will be made public as soon as the probe is completed. She says any ICD employee implicated will be dealt with severely.
According to reports some jokes refer to Mbeki seeking prostitutes. Others are of cartoons of people having sex.
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Note, Mbeki recently ingratiated himself to Sudanese officials by insulting Churchill and the Brits in a speech. So I have posted this to get him back. Heh.
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Update: American blogger Black River Eagle at Jewels in the Jungle in Germany writes another great post on Darfur, this time about the UN report. Sorry I cannot comment more about it now but I need to rest as my eyeballs are burning from reading ten zillion reports flying round cyberspace. Tracking, sifting, summarising and capturing them for here before they disappear from the news reels, is quite a feat. News output changes by the minute and keeping your eyes peeled (literally) is challenging but tiring. Although I will keep up to date with tracking the news and post important items at a later date, I need to take a break from posting for a while. There is plenty for readers to catch up on here from the past week. Bye for now. P.S. I can tell from my visitor stats that hundreds of different readers here visit from all corners of the world. Don't be shy. Please say hi in comments or email me. Thanks.
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