Gunmen have killed two African Union peacekeepers and critically wounded a third in Darfur, the African Union said in a statement today.

SUDAN’S Darfur region is facing a new wave of killings and rapes, with fighting between rebel factions displacing thousands of villagers despite a recent peace agreement, the UN humanitarian chief has warned.

SUDAN yesterday denied Darfur rebel reports that its troops had attacked their camps, breaking a ceasefire and a peace deal signed this month to end the conflict which has killed tens of thousands.

Eight foreign ministers have led a UN Security Council meeting to demand that rebel groups in Darfur join a peace deal signed last week, and warned that the fate of the Sudanese region would be a test for the powerful UN body.

The United Nations’ humanitarian chief left a Darfur refugee camp in a hurry Monday after demonstrators – calling for UN peacekeepers – attacked a translator, accusing him of supporting the feared Janjaweed militia, a UN spokeswoman said.

Two of the three rebel groups in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region are refusing to sign a peace plan today, jeopardising efforts to end the bloodbath that has cost at least 180,000 lives.

The African Union has accused Sudanese government forces of attacking civilians in Darfur, committing acts of “calculated and wanton destruction” that have killed at least 44 people and displaced thousands more during the past two weeks.

Sudan’s government and two rebel groups signed an agreement on how to resolve the conflict in the country’s western Darfur region.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan urged donors yesterday to fund a bigger African force to help end bloodshed in Darfur, where experts say hundreds are still dying daily nine months after the mission first deployed.

US legislators have vowed to push for UN sanctions against the Sudanese government after meeting with Darfur rebels in western Sudan and visiting camps for Sudanese refugees in Chad over the weekend.

The UN World Food Program suspended food convoys to the Darfur region in western Sudan after rebel forces attacked the market town of Ghubaysh and the government retaliated, UN humanitarian officials said.

CHAOS is looming in Sudan’s western Darfur region as violence increases, order collapses, and the number of desperate people in need of humanitarian aid reaches nearly 2.3 million, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said in a report to the United Nations Security Council.

Sudan has claimed 25 people, including 22 policemen, were killed in rebel attacks on Monday on several camps housing tens of thousands of people displaced by the 21-month Darfur conflict.

SECURITY in Sudan’s Darfur region is a “farce” with the government engaged in ethnic cleansing and rebel groups looting and abducting civilians in violation of an April cease-fire, a rights group said yesterday.

THE Sudanese army and police have surrounded refugee camps in the war- torn region of Darfur and denied access to humanitarian groups, the UN said yesterday.

Eight Sudanese aid workers have gone missing in rebel-controlled territory in Sudan.

African Union monitors are investigating claims that the Sudanese military bombarded a village with helicopter gunships, driving terrified farmers from their homes, just days before the expiry of a United Nations deadline to end the violence in Darfur.

Darfur peace talks made little headway today as Sudanese insurgents insisted they would not lay down their weapons until pro-government Arab militiamen stop targeting largely black African civilians in their country’s troubled western region.

A Sudanese minister has rejected any immediate wider role for African Union troops in its troubled Darfur region, saying security in the western region is the responsibility of Sudanese forces.

PUSHED to end the Darfur crisis, Sudan’s government gathered in Nigeria yesterday for talks with rebel leaders in Sudan’s bloodied western Darfur region.

Pushed to end what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, envoys of Sudan’s government gathered in Nigeria today for talks with rebel leaders in Sudan’s bloodied western Darfur region.

SUDANESE President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said yesterday that Western nations were exploiting the Darfur conflict to gain control of resources like oil and gold in the arid region.

WHILE world leaders recently gathered to mark the tenth anniversary of Rwanda’s genocide, another horror story has been unfolding in Sudan.