UNITED NATIONS — A 26-year-old U.S. aid official was shot in the face in Sudan's Darfur region Tuesday when her convoy was ambushed, an incident likely to lend more urgency to a U.S. push to resolve the humanitarian crisis in the African nation.
State Department spokesman Adam Ereli said the United States had demanded an investigation of the attack, which occurred in daylight on a road the United Nations believed to be safe. Officials said the vehicle carrying the U.S. Agency for International Development employee was clearly marked.
Ereli said it was too early to know whether the worker was targeted because she was a U.S. official, "but obviously that possibility is ... on our minds." The woman was not identified; her wounds were not life-threatening.
The shooting came as U.S. officials were promoting a new strategy to break a U.N. Security Council stalemate on a resolution for Sudan.
The U.S. has separated its resolution on Darfur, in Sudan's west, into three parts -- peacekeeping, sanctions and accountability -- because disagreement over how to punish suspected Sudanese war criminals was delaying the deployment of peacekeepers and observers.
"We have literally run out of time on Sudan, and we felt we had to move ahead," acting U.S. Ambassador Anne Patterson said.
The U.S. has asked for a vote Thursday on a resolution authorizing 10,000 peacekeepers for the central African nation.
Negotiations concerning the Darfur crisis had stalled over penalties for militia and government leaders who are accused of causing thousands of people to die and about 2 million others to be driven from their land in two years of systematic attacks.
"The conflict in Darfur is horrific," Ereli said Tuesday. "The atrocities are outrageous. The time has long passed when this conflict should have been resolved. The government of Sudan bears a large share of the responsibility for this conflict."
The resolutions on sanctions and a way to hold Sudanese leaders accountable for war crimes will be more difficult to negotiate. The U.S. would like to see a "no-fly" zone to prevent aerial attacks on civilians in Darfur, stiff sanctions against the government of Sudan, travel bans for Sudanese officials believed to be responsible for atrocities and war crimes tribunals to be established by the African Union.
