\n UN peacekeepers said Thursday they were probing killings this week in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, raising the death toll to 17 after doctors initially reported that militiamen shot dead nine people.\n<\/p>\n
\n The shootings took place in the village of Al-Dalij in the state of Central Darfur on Monday, a doctors' committee close to the country's protest movement said, blaming the \"massacre\" on Janjaweed militiamen.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Janjaweed, a militia accused by rights groups of widespread abuses in Darfur at the height of the conflict in the region, has been absorbed into Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Tuesday, the doctors committee said nine people were \"killed by bullets and sticks of the Janjaweed,\" adding that two more people had been killed but their identity was unknown.\n<\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, the UN-African Union peacekeeping mission deployed in Darfur since 2007 said it had sent a team to Al-Dalij to investigate Monday's events.\n<\/p>\n
\n \"The mission met with the affected persons and local authorities who confirmed that 17 people had been killed, 15 others injured with more than 100 houses burnt,\" UNAMID said in a statement.\n<\/p>\n
\n It said the violence had flared between \"nomads and residents apparently angered by the increase in commodity prices at the local market\".\n<\/p>\n
\n The conflict in Darfur erupted in 2003 when ethnic African rebels took up arms against the government of then-president Omar al-Bashir, accusing it of marginalising the region economically and politically.\n<\/p>\n
\n The United Nations says the conflict left more than 300,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Janjaweed militiamen were recruited when Khartoum trained and equipped Arab raiders to crush the rebellion.\n<\/p>\n
\n Back then, they were sent to attack villages on camel and horseback as part of a campaign of terror that saw now-ousted Bashir indicted by the International Criminal Court for suspected war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.\n<\/p>\n
\n The violence in Darfur has subsided over the years, and militia groups like the Janjaweed have been absorbed into Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.\n<\/p>\n
\n The group is commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, now deputy chief of the military council that took power following Bashir's ouster.\n<\/p>\n
\n His forces have been accused of carrying out a crackdown on demonstrators at a Khartoum sit-in on June 3 that left dozens dead and hundreds wounded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
UN peacekeepers said Thursday they were probing killings this week in Sudan's war-torn Darfur region, raising the death toll to 17 after doctors initially reported that militiamen shot dead nine people. The shootings took place in the village of Al-Dalij in the state of Central Darfur on Monday, a doctors' committee close to the country's […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[553],"tags":[],"ji_location":[],"class_list":["post-41664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-live-feed"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n