Global General

Chinese worker freed in Darfur

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-09-17 19:15

KHARTOUM - The former rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) announced on Friday that it had freed a Chinese worker, who was kidnapped in eastern Chad earlier this week, from the hands of kidnappers in the restive western Sudanese region of Darfur.

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"Our forces attacked a group of suspects and liberated the Chinese worker," Zu al-Noon Sulaim, spokesman of the SLM led by Mini Arkou Minawi, told Xinhua.

"The Chinese worker is now with our forces and they will hold contacts with (Sudanese) authorities concerned to hand over the Chinese worker to them," the spokesman added.

He said that the Chinese worker was liberated by the SLM forces in the North Darfur State, noting that he had not got detailed information on the operation.

The report has not been officially confirmed by the Sudanese government or the Chinese Embassy in Sudan.

Mini Arkou Minawi, the SLM head, signed a peace deal the with the Sudanese government in May, 2006, and became by then the senior adviser of the Sudanese president and the chairman of the transitional authority in Darfur, while a majority of other rebel movements have refused to join the peace process.

Abductions have repeatedly taken place at border areas between Sudan, Chad and the Central Africa Republic,  where unidentified groups usually transport persons kidnapped in Chad and the Central Africa across the border to the neighboring Darfur region.