Up to 30 villagers were killed and 40 wounded when armed raiders attacked a village in the Darfur region of western Sudan, an African Union (AU) official said today.
The attackers, riding horses and camels, are suspected to be janjaweed, militiamen who have forced some two million people to flee into camps, said the official.
The three-hour attack on Saturday was on Sirba, about 30 miles north of El Geneina, capital of West Darfur state and close to the Sudan-Chad border, the AU official said.
A leader of the rebel National Redemption Front said that the Sudanese army took part with the janjaweed in the attack on Sirba and a similar attack in the nearby Abu Surouj area.
But an army spokesperson said government forces were not involved in any operations in the Sirba area.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan intends to float a "hybrid" African Union-UN force for Darfur in talks with Sudanese officials and invited major powers to take part, the United Nations said today.
Sudan has been adamantly opposed to a UN force, authorized by the UN Security Council so the United Nations is considering alternatives to get a larger and better-funded peacekeeping force that would be acceptable to Khartoum.
The African Union is holding a series of meetings in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa this week on its under-financed 7,000-member force in Darfur that has been unable to stop the violence, which has thrown some 2.5 million people out of their homes over the past three years.