Sudanese massacre dozens in darfur refugee camp

At least 25 people were massacres after Sudanese security forces attacked of the largest camps for displaced people in Darfur.

The violence came just hours before Djibril Bassole, the new international mediator trying to find a political solution to end five years of war in Sudan's western region of Darfur, was to arrive to take up his post.

Witnesses said government forces massed at dawn outside Kalma, a highly charged camp in South Darfur that is home to up to 100,000 people displaced by the conflict and which the authorities have previously wanted to empty.

Adam Mohamed, a community leader in Kalma, said 30 people were killed and 25 wounded in clashes with police before the heavy gunfire subsided.

"The government forces still surround the camp. There is no fighting now but tension is high throughout the camp and no one knows where the wounded people have been taken," Mohamed told AFP by telephone.

"Later, they opened fire on the eastern side of the camp. There were many casualties. Up to now, we have 27 confirmed dead and 75 wounded." Five of the dead are women and two are children, he told AFP.

Homes were torched and fires still smouldered in the camp, rebels said.

"Shortly after we got calls from sheikhs who said those officers had already positioned themselves in the camp and that shots were fired," he added.

Peacekeepers have since scrambled to Kalma to try to open a safe corridor to evacuate casualties.

"A UNAMID police and military force accessed the camp to assess the situation and we are prepared for possible assistance in the case of evacuating any type of casualties," Mezni said.

International charity Medecins Sans Frontieres said at least 65 wounded, more than half of them women and children, were admitted to its clinic.

The United Nations says that up to 300,000 people have died and more than 2.2 million fled their homes since the conflict in Darfur erupted in February 2003.

The war began when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime and state-backed Arab militias, fighting for resources and power in one of the most remote and deprived places on earth.

The UN-brokered peace process on Darfur has stalled since talks in Libya last October were boycotted by key rebel factions.

Bassole's appointment has been greeted with some derision because he has neither Arabic nor English in a country where most government officials and rebels speak both