Women and children scattered as the gunmen rode in. Kadija Abakr Abdelrahman ducked into her simple home in search of safety.

“There was a man, Arab, Janjawid,” she said, simply, six days later in the gloom of El Geneina hospital, holding Aasha, her three-year-old daughter on her hip.

He had demanded money, levelling his AK47 at the toddler. “I told him there was nothing, but he insisted, ‘I will shoot, I will shoot, I will shoot’,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek.

He wasn’t bluffing. He shot Aasha in the neck twice. She will live. But by the end of the day 13 people had been killed in three waves of attacks on the camps around Sirba, in western Darfur. Another 18 lay injured and more than 200 homes had been burnt to the ground.

Three and a half years after the farming tribes of Darfur took up arms against an Arab-dominated regime in Khartoum, the killing continues.

Where once the camps of western Darfur offered a haven from government troops and their Janjawid allies, they now offer only anarchy and fear. A meagre force of 7,000 African Union troops has been unable to keep the peace or even secure the camps.

Residents say that the camps around El Geneina — the captial of western Darfur, about 30km (20 miles) from the border with Chad — are riddled with armed militias and bandits. The feared Arab Janjawid and their allies among the Chadian rebels roam the dusty paths between huts.

Where once women were raped if they left in search of water or firewood, they are now a target inside the supposed safety of the camps.

Jan Egeland, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, arrived in El Geneina yesterday to see for himself how conditions had changed. He spent the day meeting tribal leaders and representatives of the people herded into camps.

In Addis Abbaba, the Ethiopian capital, Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary-General, met African Union officials to discuss Darfur. Last night he said that Sudan had accepted in principle UN and African Union forces in Darfur, but had yet to agree on the number of troops to be deployed. Until now Sudan had rejected UN peacekeepers for Darfur.

Officials are considering a hybrid force of African and UN troops, or bolstering the AU force with logistical support, equipment and personnel.

But there is only one solution for the tens of thousands of people crammed into the miserable camps around El Geneina.

“Every time we meet with the UN officials we ask them to bring peacekeeping forces to the camps. But up to now they are not doing this,” Sheikh Abdullah Adam Abdullah, one of the local leaders, said.

“People are giving this responsibility to the African Union but they cannot protect themselves, so how can they protect others?” He painted a miserable picture of life inside Ardamata, one of the camps dotted with mango and neem trees just outside town.

Shootings and rapes have become more common as the number of gunmen roaming his camp had increased, he said. “We expect at any moment an attack on the camps because there are so many new armed men who aim to close all the camps and send us home,” he said.

More than 200,000 people have died during the conflict. A further two million have been driven into camps as a result of the Government’s scorched-earth policy, using Janjawid militias to kill, loot and burn their way across Darfur. Insecurity has increased further since May when a peace agreement was signed between the Government and one rebel faction.The remaining rebel groups have fragmented, leaving a complex patchwork of control, while the Government has employed Russian-built aircraft to bomb civilians in the north.

Mr Egeland saw the insecurity at first hand. He was prevented from visiting camps in western Darfur yesterday because of the risk of violence. His planned three-day visit was reduced to two by government restrictions on his itinerary.

Many refugees came to him with pleas for help. “We beg you to take us out of here to any other country, any other place,” al-Zein Eid Abdel Banaat, an elderly Darfuri, told Mr Egeland after trekking to El Geneina from the camp where he lives. “I plead with you for your help. We want our lives back.”

Mr Egeland said later: “This is my fourth visit here and I have not seen such a bad security situation. There are too many armed militias outside the camps and inside. Aid workers in western Darfur cannot move on the roads because their vehicles are being stolen and civilians are caught in the crossfire between the groups.”

DEATH IN DARFUR

DEFINING GENOCIDE

Mar 2004: Outgoing UN co-ordinator in Sudan calls Darfur “worlds greatest humanitarian crisis”

Jul 2004: US Congress condemns what it terms state-sponsored genocide by the Sudanese Government’s proxy Janjawid militia

Sep 2004: US President George Bush repeats genocide claim

Jan 2005: UN report on Darfur concludes that while there were mass killings, there was no “genocidal intent”. A declaration of genocide would have forced nations to intervene

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