UN Security Council to hold urgent meeting Thursday on Darfur: diplomats

The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting Thursday on ethnic fighting that has left at least 155 people dead in the Darfur region of Sudan, diplomats said.

The meeting will be held behind closed doors and has been requested by three non-permanent members of the council -- Norway, Ireland and Estonia -- and three permanent members -- the US, Britain and France, the diplomats said.

A heavy Sudanese troop presence helped restore calm Tuesday in Darfur, local sources said, after three days of ethnic violence which also displaced tens of thousands of people.

The violence erupted Saturday between Arab nomads and members of the non-Arab Massalit ethnic group in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, killing at least 100 people and wounding more than 130, said state governor Mohamed Abdalla al-Douma.

The transitional government in the capital Khartoum has deployed military units to the arid western region, where the recent end of a joint United Nation and African Union peacekeeping mission had raised fears of more bloodshed.

It also follows the signing of a peace agreement between the government and multiple rebel forces in October, hoped to end years of war that left the region bitterly divided and awash with weapons.