Help after Sudan ambush
Volume 11, No. 44, June 01, 2006

Helping hands: Capt Mark Thorp and Leut Vince Carroll at the site of the ambush in Sudan.

TWO ADF personnel have been praised for aiding injured Sudanese near the small town of Abyei while deployed on Operation Azure with the United Nations Mission In Sudan (UNMIS).

Capt Mark Thorp and Leut Vince Carroll were part of a patrol that investigated the ambush of a convoy of unarmed members of a disbanded faction and their families on March 8.

The convoy reportedly originated from Khartoum and consisted of 16 vehicles, including trucks and buses, carrying about 2000 men, women and children.

The convoy was stopped at a checkpoint and hit by RPGs and automatic small arms fire for about half an hour. Thirteen people were killed, including a child, 31 people were wounded and most of the vehicles were damaged.

Op Azure deputy force logistics officer Maj Dean Horder said the UN patrol, led by Capt Thorp, was unarmed.
“On arrival at the ambush site at first light, Capt Thorp’s first challenge was to establish control of the milling families and soldiers and to conduct detailed interviews with witnesses and convoy members,” Maj Horder said.

“The dead lay as they had fallen and had to be collected to one location. During the interviews and site investigations, Leut Carroll noticed that some of the injured were still in the vicinity. He established a triage area and a temporary aid post. The injured, assisted or walking, began to move into the makeshift aid post.”

Leut Carroll, who had completed the three-week combat first aid course with 1CSSB in Darwin before deployment, treated one broken jaw, a broken back, blindness in the eye of one person from RPG strike fragments, three broken ankles, and a victim who received multiple deep wounds from the RPG strike.

“Leut Carroll used most of the considerable supplies from his combat first aid kit treating the wounded in most inhospitable circumstances.”