Sudan’s helping hand

TREATMENT: LEUT Vince Carroll treats a Sudanese man after he was injured while travelling in a convoy that was ambushed outside of Khartoum.

Volume 49, No. 10, June 15, 2006

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 buses and trucks, carrying about 2,000 men, women and children.

The convoy was stopped at the 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 area.

“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. The temperature peaked at about 49 degrees Celsius and there was little shade and very limited water,” MAJ Horder said.

“LEUT Carroll and Capt Thorp remained at the site for about seven hours maintaining control, treating the wounded, attempting to secure casualty evacuation and removal of the dead, completing interviews and investigations and coordinating relocation of the several hundred survivors with UN force protection to Wun Cum, a controlled safe haven in the south of the sector.”

The Abyei sector remains potentially volatile and the ongoing Abeyi border dispute represents a significant challenge to maintaining the peace in the lead up to the planned 2011 referendum.
In the referendum, Southern Sudan will choose to either remain with a united Sudan or secede to form a separate country.

UNMIS consists of 10,000 troops from 50 countries, including 15 ADF members and 10 AFP officers.

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