Ethiopian peacekeepers deported to refugee camp

CAIRO: Sudanese authorities deported around three dozen Ethiopian peacekeepers, working on the UN mission in Darfur, to a refugee camp, the state-run news agency reported.

Al Fateh Ibrahim Mohammed, head of the refugee agency in North Darfur province, said the troops are among 120 Ethiopian forces from the Tigrayan ethnic group, who have sought asylum in Sudan ater their stay ended earlier this year, according to the SUNA news agency.

He said the the troops, including 14 women, refused to return ater being recalled by their home country, Ethiopia, for fear of being detained by the federal government in Addis Ababa.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has waged a devastating war since November against the regional government in Tigray, claiming that Tigray forces had atacked a military base.

The Tigray conflict has been marked by massacres, gang rapes, expulsions and forced starvation. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted in March that “ethnic cleansing” has taken place in Tigray.

Federal authorities in Addis Ababa have also swept up thousands of Tigrayans including high-level military officials into detention centers across Ethiopia on accusations that they are traitors, according to an Associated Press report.

United Nations spokesman Farhan Haq told the AP last month that a number of Ethiopians in the UN peacekeeping mission in Darfur were “seeking international protection” as several hundred troops are being repatriated.

Mohammed, the Sudanese refugee official, said Sudan deported at least 33 troops Sunday from North Darfur’s provincial capital of el-fasher to a refugee camp in the eastern province of Kassala, on the borders with Ethiopia. At least 31 others would leave el-fasher Monday, he added.

The troops would join tens of thousands of Ethiopian refugees who fled the Tigray conflict to neighbouring Sudan.

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir has dissolved parliament, a long-awaited step to pave the way for the appointment of lawmakers from formerly warring parties in the country.

The move was in line with a peace deal signed to end a civil war that began in 2013.

The president dissolved parliament on Saturday and the new body will be formed in “a mater of time, not too long,” his spokesman Ateny Wek Ateny told Reuters.

According to the deal that ended the civil war, parliament must be expanded from 400 members to 550 and must include members from all parties to the peace accord.

South Sudan won independence from Sudan in 2011 ater decades of civil war.