West Darfur security forces retrieve hijacked Unamid vehicle

The Security Committee of West Darfur state announced the retrieval of an Unamid vehicle that was hijacked by militiamen in Subirkan, 5km east of El Geneina, after they had killed three Senegalese Unamid peacekeepers on Sunday. The head of West Darfur state police Major-General Abu Bakr Abdelrazig reported in a press release that the security forces pursued the perpetrators. They killed two of them and captured one. The security forces lost four of its troops. Abdelrazig added that the security forces also managed to seize a motorcycle, weapons and ammunition from the militiamen. The peacekeepers were escorting a water convoy from El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, to the UN mission’s state headquarters when they were ambushed, Unamid said in a statement. Together with the three Unamid troops killed on Sunday, another Senegalese peacekeeper was wounded. It was the second deadly attack on Unamid in three days.  UN peacekeepers have increasingly become a target for ambushes and attacks, with the assailants aiming to take their vehicles and weapons. A Unamid patrol was ambushed on the same road in October 2012. File photo: Albert González Farran/Unamid  Related: Four Unamid peacekeepers die, one injured in separate Darfur attacks (13 October 2013)