KHARTOUM, Sudan - Militiamen on horseback ambushed a refugee convoy in Sudan's western Darfur region, killing some 30 civilians, the United Nations and aid workers said Sunday, and African Union peacekeepers called to investigate were briefly taken hostage by other refugees.

A Sudanese People's Liberation Army (SPLA) soldier stands guard at the Juba airport in Sudan in front of a UN vehicle, June 2006. Twenty-two civilians were killed in a weekend attack in western Sudan which the government blamed on Darfur rebels and which threatened to deepen the crisis in the war-torn region. [AFP]

With violence in the region worsening, aid workers in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, and the UN said pro-government janjaweed militiamen ambushed a truck Saturday outside Sirba on a road near the border with Chad and executed about 30 civilians.

"Some of the passengers were shot by the attackers and others were burnt to death," a UN statement said.

The governor of West Darfur denied the attack was carried out by janjaweed, blaming anti-government rebels he claimed are seeking "to make citizens lose confidence in the African Union."

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes since ethnic African rebels rose up against Sudan's Arab-dominated government in early 2003.

The regime in Khartoum is accused of responding by unleashing the janjaweed militias of Arab nomads, who have been blamed for most of the atrocities. Sudanese officials deny using the janjaweed and oppose replacing African Union peacekeepers with a joint mission of some 20,000 U.N. and African soldiers.

Information from Darfur, a vast region nearly the size of Texas, is increasingly hard to come by because the government has prohibited foreign journalists from traveling there and imposed tight restrictions on what aid workers are allowed to say.

But what little news emerges has become increasingly bleak.

The spokesman for the 7,000-strong African Union force in Darfur, Noureddine Mezni, said a helicopter crew and team of AU peacekeepers sent Sunday to investigate the Sirba killings were detained for several hours by an angry mob of civilians before being released.

Several hundred peacekeepers also were reported attacked in their base in El Geneina.

Peacekeepers returned fire when they saw their attackers were armed with rocket-propelled grenades, an African Union soldier said. It was not clear who the assailants were, said the soldier, who insisted on speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

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