The United Nations human rights chief said today "several hundred" civilians - far more than first thought - may have died in late August attacks by militias in the south of Sudan's violent Darfur region.
The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Louise Arbour, said the attacks appeared to have been carried out with the "knowledge and material support" of the government.
"The attacks ... were massive in scale, involving a large number of villages, and were carried out over only a few days. Government knowledge, if not complicity, in the attacks is almost certain," the OHCHR said in a report.
"The (OHCHR) ... is urging the government of Sudan to order an independent investigation into recent militia attacks that may have left hundreds of civilians dead in south Darfur," it said in an accompanying statement.
Early last month the High Commissioner's office put the possible death toll from raids near Buram at 38. Many of the 10,000 people in the 45 villages targeted in the attacks, which began on August 28th and lasted into September, were forced to flee.
But it revised the toll in its latest report on the situation in Darfur, drawn up together with the United Nations Assistance Mission in Sudan, and based on interviews with survivors of the attacks and other sources. "The large-scale assaults resulted in chaotic displacement, widespread separation of families and scores of missing children," the report said. "Most of the villages attacked were under government control," it added.
Violence in Darfur has taken tens of thousands of lives since 2003 and more than 2 million people have been driven from their homes after a simmering ethnic conflict between nomadic Arab tribes and mostly non-Arabs erupted into war. Rebels said they were defending the sedentary "African" farmers against the government and its Janjaweed militia allies, which the United States has accused of acts of genocide.
The Buram raids were carried out by between 300 and 1,000 armed men from the Habbania "Arab" tribe, the OHCHR said. Subsequent attacks by militia from another government-allied tribe, the Fallata, caused the population to scatter even further, hampering aid efforts, it added.