Peacekeeping Forces

Armored U.N. vehicles were guarding East Timor's leaders today and a beefed-up contingent of Australian troops patrolled streets and searched cars in the wake of rebel attacks Monday on the president and prime minister. The army chief has blamed the United Nations, which oversees a 1,400-member international police force, for failing to protect the country's top leaders and demanded an outside investigation. But the U.N.

NATO peacekeepers reopened two demolished border checkpoints between Serbia and northern Kosovo on Wednesday as thousands of Serbs protested Kosovo's independence. For three days, Kosovo's Serbs have shown their anger over Sunday's declaration of independence by the ethnic Albanian leadership, destroying United Nations and NATO property, setting off small bombs and staging noisy rallies.

Hundreds of U.N. peacekeepers raided Haiti's largest and most violent slum, seizing a portion of it in a six-hour gun battle that killed a suspected gang member. Four others were wounded, along with two soldiers, officials said. More than 700 heavily armed troops from seven countries participated in the raid on Port-au-Prince's Cite Soleil slum, entering in armored vehicles and on foot as helicopters circled above.

A plane carrying 11 people helping African peacekeepers burst into flames and crashed during a third day of fighting in Mogadishu, Somalia's capital. Local radio station Shabelle said the plane, a Russian-made Ilyushin used in the region to transport cargo and troops, was hit by a rocket as it took off. "The plane, which was flying low-level, was hit by a rocket and then fell to the ground," Shabelle reporter Maryan Hashi said.

Unidentified gunmen have killed five African Union peacekeepers in the Darfur region of western Sudan, the deadliest single attack against the force since late 2004, an AU spokesman said. The five peacekeepers were on guard duty near the Sudanese border with Chad when they came under fire Sunday, the spokesman said. Three gunmen were also killed, he said.

China urged Sudan to accept the deployment of United Nations peacekeepers in Darfur, increasing pressure on a key economic partner that Beijing has been criticized for protecting. "Our position toward Darfur is clear. We have exercised all possible efforts, political, economic and others and advised our Sudanese brothers to accept [former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi] Annan's plan," China's assistant foreign minister, Zhai Jun, said after meeting with Sudanese President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir.

The upper house of parliament backed a bill Tuesday that calls for international forces to cease military operations unless they are attacked or have first consulted with the Afghan army, government or police. Lt. Col. David Accetta, a U.S. military spokesman, said he did not have an immediate response. A spokeswoman at NATO's International Security Assistance Force declined to comment.

Sudan on Tuesday accepted a combined United Nations and African Union peacekeeping force of up to 23,000 troops and police to stabilize to the war-torn Darfur region. But U.N. diplomats, cautious after months of waffling by the regime, were not ready to celebrate a breakthrough. The agreement came before a Security Council mission to Khartoum on Saturday to press for an end to the government-stoked conflict in Darfur. At the end of a two-day summit of Sudanese, U.N.

The United Nations is investigating allegations of widespread sexual abuse by hundreds of Moroccan peacekeepers serving in Ivory Coast and has summoned Rabat's diplomats to respond, U.N. officials said. The officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the investigation involved Moroccan soldiers having sex with a large number of underage girls. The world body took the highly unusual step of confining the entire battalion of 800 troops to barracks in the rebel stronghold of Bouake.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to keep 13,600 peacekeepers in Lebanon for 12 more months, recognition that the country remains unstable more than a year after Israel's war with Hezbollah. The force was deployed to help Lebanese troops extend their authority into the south for the first time in decades and create a buffer zone near Israel free of Hezbollah fighters.