Armed men abducted a civilian peacekeeper in the capital of Sudan's North Darfur state yesterday hours after UN Security Council envoys arrived in the city.
It was believed to be the first time kidnappers had seized a foreigner in El Fasher, a development certain to dismay aid officials in Darfur who have pulled staff back to the main towns to escape a wave of abductions in remote locations.
"Today in the evening, armed men entered the residence of four civilian staff members in downtown El Fasher. They tied up two of them and made away with the other two in a vehicle. One man escaped and the other is still missing," said Kemal Saiki, spokesman for the joint UN/African Union force Unamid.
Mr Saiki said the missing man was not Sudanese but gave no other personal details.
Sudanese security forces sealed off the main exits from the city, seeking the UN vehicle that the kidnappers used to escape, he added.
Mr Saiki it was believed to be the first time an international worker had been kidnapped in the centre of El Fasher. "We have had carjackings and house break-ins, but no abductions."
He said the attackers had threatened the four civilians inside the house and made them lie on the floor at gunpoint.
Foreign peacekeepers and aid workers have been the targets of a series of kidnappings in Darfur in recent months, many of them blamed on gangs of young men seeking ransoms.
Hostile crowds greeted the UN envoys when they arrived in El Fasher yesterday as part of a week-long visit to press for progress in Sudan's faltering peace efforts in the seven-year Darfur conflict, as well as on the 2005 settlement that ended decades of north-south civil war.
Agencies