NAIROBI, Kenya, Sept. 30 — Hundreds of Darfurian rebels overran an African Union peacekeeping base in the central Darfur region of Sudan in a surprise raid over the weekend, killing at least 10 soldiers, possibly kidnapping dozens more and seizing supplies that included heavy weapons, African Union officials said Sunday.
The raid, which began late Saturday and appeared to be highly organized, was the deadliest and boldest attack on African Union peacekeepers since they arrived in Darfur three years ago.
It came just as the United Nations has been trying to persuade member countries to commit troops and support to a greatly expanded Darfur peacekeeping force. Aid officials now fear that some of those countries may have second thoughts about participating.
According to Noureddine Mezni, an African Union spokesman, the rebels swarmed the base just after sunset with 30 heavily armed trucks, surprising the guards and overwhelming the peacekeepers with a barrage of machine-gun fire.
“We tried to defend ourselves but we were completely outnumbered,” Mr. Mezni said. “Our camp was totally destroyed and they looted everything: guns, trucks, even an armored personnel carrier.”
Mr. Mezni said the rebels, whose precise affiliation was unclear as of late Sunday, came at the camp from every direction in what he called a “deliberate and sustained attack.”
After the initial assault, they came back a second time to plunder, African Union officials said.
The base, in the town of Haskanita about 100 miles east of Nyala, a major city in Darfur, is on flat scrubland and had been the temporary home of about 100 peacekeepers.
Pictures taken by news agency photographers who reached the site on Sunday showed damaged white, prefabricated base buildings, at least one burned-out armored vehicle and survivors of the assault leaving with what few belongings they had left.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who only a few weeks ago completed a highly publicized diplomatic mission to Darfur to lay the basis for the expanded peacekeeping force and for new peace talks to be held in Libya, issued a statement condemning the attack and called for “the perpetrators to be held fully accountable for this outrageous act.”
The attack was the most dramatic display yet of the new kind of chaos that is engulfing Darfur, where the conflict has morphed from a rebellion and brutal counterinsurgency into a free-for-all among dozens of armed groups, with aid workers and peacekeepers increasingly in their sights.
Relief officials said that as those groups splintered, their new factions needed mat?riel, and that the attack on the peacekeepers might have been intended to seize quality weapons. “It’s indicative of the complete insecurity,” said Alun McDonald, a spokesman for the Oxfam aid organization in Sudan. “These groups are attacking anybody and everybody with total impunity.”
He added that armed groups were “increasingly targeting aid workers to steal their vehicles, radios and logistical stuff.” He said the attack on the peacekeepers “sounds quite similar to that, just on a much larger scale.”
Mr. McDonald and others expressed concern that the spiraling violence could scare away countries that have been considering contributing troops to the long-awaited United Nations-African Union peacekeeping mission, which is supposed to begin arriving in Darfur later this year.
Anticipation of that force, which will expand the number of peacekeepers from 7,000 to 26,000, and the high-level negotiations between rebel groups and the Sudanese government scheduled for October, may be fueling a power struggle that is driving this new round of bloodshed.
Haskanita is embroiled in a three-sided war among two formidable rebel groups and the government. United Nations officials said that the area has become so dangerous that most aid organizations have pulled out.
Recently, Haskanita has been the scene of some of the heaviest fighting in the region. Aid workers said those battles killed more than 300 people, including several dozen mowed down by government helicopter gunships. The government denied killing any civilians.
On top of that, the two main rebel groups in Haskanita, the Sudan Liberation Army and the Justice and Equality Movement, have splintered and begun fighting among themselves, driving thousands of civilians from their homes. Many had set up tents around the small African Union base, where the peacekeepers were handing out food and medicine.
“Our job out there was basically humanitarian,” Mr. Mezni said.
He estimated that most of the base’s troops were Nigerian. More than 50 are still missing, and officials believe they may have been captured. At least seven soldiers were seriously wounded. African Union peacekeepers have been regularly attacked, but this was the first time a base had been overrun.
Mr. Mezni did not specify which rebel faction he thought was responsible. But Sudanese government officials blamed a splinter faction connected to the Justice and Equality Movement.
“We’ve been told that people in the area recognized them,” said Ali Sadiq, a spokesman for the ministry of Foreign Affairs.
He denied that the government had anything to do with the attack, saying: “We can’t do that. We’re working hand in hand with the A.U.”
African Union officials said that there were few government troops in the area and that it was unlikely that government soldiers or militias allied to them had killed the peacekeepers.
The Justice and Equality Movement also denied involvement. “We strongly condemn any attack on the A.U.,” the movement said in a statement broadcast on BBC. “They’re here to help the people of Darfur.”
The group blamed the government for staging the attack.
The Darfur conflict has grown increasingly complex. The violence has often been characterized as government-backed Arab tribes slaughtering non-Arab tribes, and four years ago, when the heavy fighting began, that may have been the best simplification of what was happening. United Nations officials estimate at least 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million made homeless.
But recently, Arab tribes have begun fighting Arab tribes, rebels have begun fighting rebels and armed men who seem to have no allegiances are attacking whoever crosses their path.
In April, five Senegalese soldiers were killed, which, until this weekend, was the deadliest attack on peacekeepers in Darfur.
According to Mr. McDonald of Oxfam, in the last 10 days there have been 14 attacks on aid workers and some included shootings.
David Mozersky, the regional director for International Crisis Group, said the brazenness and scale of the Haskanita attack was “a very bad sign.”
“It’s a symptom of how much the conflict has expanded,” he said. “It’s no longer the government versus the rebels. There are just far more actors now.”
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