African Union kidnapped soldiers released in Darfur
Sudan-Regional, Politics, 10/10/2005

The African Union announced that several members of its contingents held earlier as hostages in the Sudanese Darfur region were released.

The spokesman for the Union, Nour Eddin al-Mozni, said that several hostages, which he did not identify their number, were released, adding that the released persons went walking towards a peace keeping force base for the Union near Teinah city, adjoining Sudan's borders with Chad.

Al-Mozni explained that the number of detained hostages is not known precisely, noting that talks in the beginning were about 18 hostages to whom the kidnappers added later other persons who were about to receive the released hostages.

Worthy mentioning that the identity of kidnappers of the African Union soldiers is not known precisely, though doubts roam on a split group from al-Adel and al-Musawat ( equity and justice) movement which fights the central Sudanese government.

In this regard, the chairman of al-Adel movement in Abuja negotiations Muhammad Togot said that the leader of the group who are presumed to have kidnapped members of the African Union is called Muhammad Saleh.

Togot said that Muhammad Saleh was expelled from the movement 6 month ago, and that he is now on the other side of the border in an adjoining country, referring to Chad but without naming it. He added that his movement tries to know the place of his existence, and that it still intends to cooperate with the African Union.

The kidnapping of the African Union soldiers came two days after the killing of 3 Nigerian soldiers working within the African peace forces in Darfur in an incident believed that the persons who did the killing belonged to Sudan's Liberation Army, one of the two rebellions groups in Darfur.

The Arfrican Union mediator Salem Ahmad Salem considered on Sunday that the recent incidents which took place in Darfur may undermine the current peace negotiations in Abuja which have been made under the sponsorship of his organization.

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