A peacekeeper was shot dead Friday in an attack on an African Union-UN base in Sudan's Darfur, the mission said, two days after the government announced it regained control of the area from rebels. "In the early morning hours of 19 April, one peacekeeper of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was shot dead and two others injured in an attack by unidentified assailants on the mission's team site near Muhagiriya," mission spokeswoman Aicha Elbasri said in a statement.

A peacekeeper was shot dead Friday in an attack on an African Union-UN base in Darfur, the mission said, two days after the government announced it regained control of the area from rebels. "In the early morning hours of 19 April, one peacekeeper of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) was shot dead and two others injured in an attack by unidentified assailants on the mission's team site near Muhagiriya," the mission's spokeswoman Aicha Elbasri said in a statement.

Sudanese Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamed has said that the Darfur region is largely calm, despite tribal and other unrest which according to the UN forced almost 90,000 people to flee this month. "The minister has affirmed (the) calmness of conditions in all Darfur states, except some looting operations carried out by the rebel movements", and attacks on commercial convoys, Hamed said, according to remarks published Thursday by the official SUNA news agency.

A rare 10-day rebel occupation of southern Darfur ended on Wednesday when the Sudanese army announced it "liberated" the area but the insurgents said they withdrew in the face of massive force. "Today SAF liberated Muhagiriya," Sudan Armed Forces spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad told AFP. The Sudan Liberation Army's Minni Minnawi faction on April 6 began their occupation of Muhagiriya and Labado, two communities strategically located about 100 kilometres (60 miles) east of the South Darfur state capital Nyala, one of Sudan's largest cities.