Save the Children announced today it is suspending its humanitarian work in a war-ravaged region of western Sudan after two of its staff were killed in an attack.
The charity said medical assistant Abhakar el Tayeb and mechanic Yacoub Abdelnabi Ahmed, both Sudanese nationals, were in clearly-marked humanitarian vehicles yesterday when they came under fire on the road between Mershing and Duma.
Save the Children UK, which operates a feeding centre and medical clinics in the area, said its operations in south Darfur had been suspended as it reviewed the situation.
A senior spokeswoman said the organisation's south Darfur staff had been returned to their base in Nyala but was unable to say when a decision on the future of its work there would be made. "We are reviewing the situation but currently operations are suspended," she said.
In October two Save the Children workers, Rafe Bullick, a programme manager from the UK, and Nourredine Issa Tayeb, a Sudanese water engineer, were killed by a landmine, blamed on rebel forces, in north-west Darfur.
Save the Children's international operations director Ken Caldwell condemned yesterday's "brutal killing". He added: "Our deepest sympathies are with the family and friends of our Sudanese colleagues."
The news of the deaths came as an African Union official warned fighting is harming peace talks between the government and rebels.
"Violations [of the ceasefire] are growing," Assane Ba said. "This is poisoning the atmosphere and we can't have meaningful negotiations in this situation," he added.
Thirteen violations of an earlier ceasefire agreement were confirmed in September and 54 documented between October and mid-December, he said.
On Saturday Travis singer Fran Healy travelled with Save the Children to southern Sudan, where he is spending the week visiting projects funded by proceeds from the new chart-topping Band Aid single to support families in the region.
The charity says decades of civil war in southern Sudan have created one of Africa's least developed areas, where 92% of the population live in poverty, only two in 10 children even get to primary education and fewer still can access safe drinking water.
The Darfur conflict, which the UN describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, erupted in February 2003 after years of strife between farmers and herders over shrinking land and water resources in the arid region.
Last month talks produced an accord on humanitarian access to the estimated 1.8 million war-displaced refugees in Darfur and in neighbouring Chad, bringing new pledges of an end to hostilities - promises that were immediately violated.
Disease and famine have killed 70,000 in Darfur since March, according to the World Health Organisation.