There was nothing sophisticated about the death that rained from the sky over Madu. An ageing Antonov cargo aircraft circled the village of simple stick shelters and choking dust.

Its rear loading doors opened on the third pass and the villagers watched as two drums were rolled out of the back. They exploded in the centre of the village. Shards of metal and razor-sharp wire had been packed inside and they formed a deadly rainstorm when the drums detonated.

An eight-year-old boy died. A mother and her three-day-old baby were injured by the shrapnel that ripped through their hut as if the walls did not exist.

Elders meeting under the shade of a thatched shelter know why they were targeted. Madu is in a region controlled by rebels of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).

“The Government thinks that we sympathise with the movements,” said Aduma Aduma Ismail. “They consider this area to be occupied by rebels, which makes all individuals sympathetic and targets.”

Villagers said that the arrival of a joint United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force at the start of the year made little difference to security.

This week seven peacekeepers were killed and 22 were injured in an attack that UN officials believe was carried out by Janjawid militiamen allied to the Government. About 40 armoured vehicles ambushed the peace force in north Darfur.

In Madu, the children, bleating goats and radios that normally provide the soundtrack to African villages, were missing because the young, elderly and infirm have moved to aid camps. They have been replaced by gunmen of the SLA, who patrol the village, their faces covered by scarves.

Abubaker Al Yaqoub, a local sheikh, said that everyone lived in fear. “After this experience every time we hear an aircraft we go and hide,” he said.

Five years after rebels took up arms against the Government in Khartoum there seems to be no end to the conflict in Darfur. Tribe has turned on tribe, rebel movements have fragmented, then splintered.

All the time the governments of Chad and Sudan have poured money into a cross-border proxy war, arming and advising rival rebel armies.

A UN official said that 200,000 people had been displaced in the first half of the year by violence.

Aid agencies were also struggling to help because of carjackings and food shortages. “These factors are pushing this population into an even more vulnerable position and any more disruption to the humanitarian operation will have very serious consequences,” she said.

The latest UN estimate suggested that 300,000 people have died in the conflict. Another 2.5 million people are crammed into camps that are squalid but have food and medicine.

The camps also have their risks. Many are recruiting grounds for armed movements. Guns and crime are rife, and at night the camps fall silent as families barricade themselves indoors.

At Krinding camp, on the outskirts of El Geneina, the capital of west Darfur, Arab militias snatch girls and steal food on an almost nightly basis.

“The camp is insecure,” said one woman who was queueing in the baking sun for her turn at a water hand pump. “The African Union and UN is patrolling in the evening but once they leave then all the bad men come back.” Now they must wait to see whether the International Criminal Court can stop the bad men of Darfur.

Times Recommends

• Would you live on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall?
• Wish you were here, says Iraq tourist board
• Russian policeman’s corruption plea to Putin