Aid worker killed in South Darfur

An aid worker employed by the international medical relief organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), was killed on 17 December during an attack on Labado town in the western Sudanese state of South Darfur, humanitarian sources said. "Twenty-nine of the 38 national staff MSF employs in Labado are still unaccounted for," Wyger Wentholt, MSF regional press and information officer, told IRIN on Wednesday. The Sudanese aid worker was shot dead in front of the MSF warehouse in Labado whilst off duty. MSF said it was shocked by the killing and called upon all parties to respect the neutrality of its organisation, its staff and its ongoing relief operations. MSF, in a press statement, said eyewitnesses had said that Labado town, with a population of 27,000, was empty and destroyed. Most people who were living in Labado had sought refuge there from previous fighting in other regions. On Tuesday, the British charity Save the Children (SC UK) announced it was pulling its humanitarian operations out of Darfur, following the deaths of four staff members over the previous two months. The war in Darfur pits the Sudanese government troops and militias, allegedly allied to the government, against rebels fighting to end what they have called marginalisation and discrimination of the region's inhabitants by the state. The conflict has displaced an estimated 1.45-million people and sent another 200,000 fleeing across the border into Chad. The UN has described the Darfur problem as one of the world's worst humanitarian crises. In New York, the UN Security Council president, Abdallah Baali, said the Council was "deeply concerned at the serious degradation of the security and humanitarian situation in Darfur and at the repeated violations of the ceasefire". It condemned ongoing ceasefire violations and called on the parties to abide by the ceasefire accord, and by the security and humanitarian protocols they signed in Abuja. In a related development, the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said at an end-of-the-year press conference that "the government and the rebels must cease attacks and abide by their commitments". He called for the accelerated deployment of African Union monitors, troops and police and additional assistance from member states.