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THE first batch of a 2,000- strong Nigerian contingent is due to leave for Sudan's Darfur region today to bolster an African Union force monitoring a shaky ceasefire in the area.
THE first batch of a 2,000- strong Nigerian contingent is due to leave for Sudan's Darfur region today to bolster an African Union force monitoring a shaky ceasefire in the area.
Director of Defence Information, Brigadier-General Ganiyu Adewale, who disclosed this yesterday, said three battalions of about 700 soldiers each would replace about 500 Nigerian troops deployed in Darfur in 2004.
"The first batch of the first battalion will leave tomorrow (today), the second batch will leave next week, while the second battalion will leave in August and the third will leave much later," Adewale stated from Abuja.
The AU force of more than 2,300 soldiers and hundreds of civilian police are deployed in Darfur to monitor a ceasefire agreed in April last year between mostly non-Arab rebels and the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum.
The AU hopes to increase its force to around 12,000 by June 2006 with an expanded mandate to protect civilians.
The rebels took up arms over what they saw as discrimination and neglect by Khartoum, which rebels say reacted by backing Arab militias who drove non-Arabs from their homes.
Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the violence and more than 2 million forced from their homes into refugee camps in Chad since the conflict began in early 2003.
AU -brokered peace talks in Abuja have moved at snail pace since they resumed in early June and the negotiations are being undermined by in-fighting in the Justice and Equality Movement and the Sudan Liberation Army rebel groups.