Sudanese rebels release 49 UNAMID peacekeepers, holding 3

Rebels in Sudan's Darfur region have announced the release of 49 members of UN's African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) they detained earlier, adding that they will continue to hold three other suspected of being government agents, Armenpress reports citing presstv.it.

"Forty-nine UNAMID soldiers have been released... We will investigate them to know if they belong to the Sudanese intelligence and security service or not," Jibril Adam Ibrahim, a spokesman for the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), said on Monday.

The JEM said its forces arrested the 52 UNAMID soldiers Sunday night in Shagied Karo in north-western Darfur after they entered the rebel-held territory without permission.

Susan Manuel, a UNAMID spokeswoman, confirmed that the peacekeepers had been freed but said the soldiers were staying in the area to try and secure the release of the three other staff, a policeman and two translators.

She also denied the three were working for Sudanese government. "They are UNAMID staff," she said.

The JEM accuses the head of UNAMID of siding with the Sudanese government.

"This incident came only a few days after the movement has asked for the signing of an agreement between it and the UNAMID to facilitate the work of the mission in Darfur, but Ibrahim Gambari, the chief of UNAMID, refused to do so," the spokesman for JEM said.

The JEM and other rebel groups drawn from Darfur's tribes rose up against the Khartoum government in 2003, complaining that the central government had left the region economically and politically marginalized.

The UNAMID was deployed in the region in 2008 but has come under repeated attacks by unidentified gunmen that have killed more than 34 of its soldiers.

The UN estimates that more than 300,000 people have died in Darfur, mostly from disease, since 2003.