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	UN rights chief says hundreds died in Darfur attack by United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Sudan   09 Oct 2006 (UNFPA)   Violence against women and children by warring groups in Darfur is reaching alarming levels. Extreme violence has been a feature of the civil conflict since it erupted in 2003. However, in the past months, attacks on women and girls, both within and outside camps for the displaced, have soared.   The rising rate of violence against women and children is increased by the participation of many different groups in these crimes. Warring parties seeking retribution against their opponents by inflicting humiliating punishment on civilians are flagrantly disregarding their obligations under international law. Moreover, there is scant evidence that culprits are being actively sought, let alone punished, for their crimes.   The United Nations Children"s Fund (UNICEF), United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Children and Armed Conflict, call upon all parties to the conflict to comply with relevant resolutions of the Security Council and remind the Sudanese government of its obligation to rigorously and transparently investigate and prosecute all crimes, particularly those committed against women and children. In addition, more must be done to protect victims who report crimes, and to protect the population in general.   The agencies urge the African Union forces to resume regular firewood and area patrols to provide effective protection to the civilian population, and call upon all parties, including armed groups within IDP camps, to stop all acts of violence, particularly against women and girls. Finally, non-governmental organizations providing support to victims of violence must be allowed to undertake their work free from intimidation and obstruction.   October 9, 2006.   UN rights chief says hundreds died in Darfur attack. (Reuters)   The United Nations human rights chief has said "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 28 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 an estimated 400,000 lives since 2003 and more than two 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.   The report cited local officials as saying the attacks were a response to previous rebel action in the area, although there was little sign of a rebel presence at the time.   In five of the main attacks, which formed the basis for the report, militia members wore khaki uniforms similar to those worn by government forces, carried heavy weaponry in most cases and were accompanied by vehicles, it said.   "Several interviewees noted that the Habbania militiamen themselves do not possess vehicles nor the kind of heavy weapons used," it added.   The aim of the assault appeared to be to drive out settlers who had arrived in the area in the 1970s fleeing drought in the north of Darfur, it said.   Although one rebel group has signed a peace deal, the UN says the humanitarian situation is worsening in Darfur, an area of western Sudan the size of France. Khartoum is resisting pressure from the UN to accept an international force to replace hard-pressed African Union troops stationed there.
	Acclaimed Russian Journalist Anna Politkovskaya Murdered by AFP Russia   October 8, 2006.   Prominent Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who was an outspoken critic of the conflict in Chechnya, has been shot dead in Moscow.   Police say a neighbour has found her shot dead in the hallway of the building where she lived in the centre of the Russian capital.   "One version of her death is premeditated murder, linked to the victim"s social or professional duties," first deputy prosecutor Vyacheslav Rosinsky said on state-owned Rossiya TV.   The Moscow city prosecutor"s office says it has opened a murder inquiry.   Politkovskaya"s colleagues and rights group Amnesty International say they are sure the reporter has been killed because of her work.   The journalist, reported by Russian media to have been 48, won fame for her persistent, often harrowing coverage of atrocities by Russian forces and Chechen militias, as well as corruption within the armed forces.   Her journalism stood in increasingly stark contrast to the rest of the Russian media, which has largely ignored these politically explosive themes since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.   A spokesman for media rights group Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations, Oleg Panfilov, said: "There was always a constant feeling something would happen to her".   Grave-faced, with large reading glasses and grey hair, Politkovskaya, who was born into the Soviet elite, never resembled the cliched image of the war journalist.   Her angry and passionate reports were backed by detail gathered in interviews conducted everywhere from within military bases to the mountains of Chechnya, trips rarely made independently by any Russian journalists.   In January 2000, Politkovskaya was awarded the Golden Pen Award by the Russian Union of Journalists.   In February 2003, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe gave her the Journalism and Democracy Award.   She was also the author of several books scathingly critical of the Russian authorities, including Dirty War: A Russian reporter in Chechnya and Putin"s Russia.   "The first thing that comes to mind is that Anna was killed for her professional activities. We don''t see any other motive for this terrible crime," said Vitaly Yaroshevsky, a deputy editor of the newspaper where Politkovskaya worked. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a shareholder in Politkovskaya''s newspaper Novaya Gazeta, called the killing a "savage crime".   As a writer for Novaya Gazeta, Politkovskaya"s audience was limited mostly to liberal intellectuals in Moscow and other major cities.   But she aired her strong condemnations of the more than decade-long conflict in Chechnya at every available opportunity on radio and TV.   Amnesty International issued a statement saying it believed "that Anna Politkovskaya was targeted because of her work as a journalist, reporting on human rights abuses in Chechnya and other regions of the Russian Federation."   The human rights group called on Russian authorities "to investigate her murder thoroughly and impartially, to make the findings of the investigation public and for suspected perpetrators to be brought to justice in accordance with international law."   Moscow chief prosecutor Yuri Syomin told reporters at the crime scene, a nine-storey Soviet-era apartment building in central Moscow, that he was treating the death as murder.
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