The two organizations expressed “utter shock and disbelief” at Thursday’s day-long attack on the South Darfur village of Khor Abeche by armed militia from the Miseriyya tribe of Niteaga under the command of Nasir Al Tijani Adel Kaadir.

The statement said the names of Al Tijani and his known collaborators will be given to a U.N. Security Council committee charged with deciding which Sudanese are thwarting peace efforts and should be subject to a travel ban and asset freeze.

Other cases going to International Criminal Court
On March 31, the Security Council also voted to refer cases of alleged rape, murder, village burnings and other atrocities to the International Criminal Court, the world’s first permanent war crimes tribunal. On Tuesday, the United Nations handed prosecutors from the tribunal thousands of documents and a sealed list of 51 people to be investigated for alleged war crimes in Darfur.

Al Tijani is the first Sudanese publicly identified as a possible war crimes suspect.

According to the statement, more than 200 of Al Tijani’s militiamen, reinforced by 150 additional fighters from Niteaga, “rampaged through the village killing, burning and destroying everything in heir paths and leaving in their wake total destruction with only the mosque and the school spared.”

The statement did not give casualty figures, but said the attack was the most savage since the sacking of the South Darfur village of Hamada in January which killed about 100 people.

It was apparently in retaliation for the alleged theft of 150 cattle, but Al Tijani said it was also because rebels from the Sudan Liberation Army, who controlled the village, refused to turn over the bodies of two of his men, the statement said.

The U.N. and the African Union said the destruction of Khor Abeche violated cease-fire agreements and Security Council resolutions calling for an end to fighting.

Dire humanitarian crisis
The vast western Sudanese region of Darfur is the scene of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. An estimated 180,000 people have died in the upheaval — many from hunger and disease — and about 2 million others have been displaced since the conflict began in February 2003.

It erupted when rebels took up arms against what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a counterinsurgency campaign in which the Arab Janjaweed militia committed wide-scale abuses against the African population.

Meanwhile, the U.N.’s World Food Program warned Friday that a drastic shortage of funds will force it to cut rations by half for more than one million people in Darfur.