African aid agencies say the African-UN peacekeeping mission in Sudan's Darfur region is failing to provide adequate protection for civilians. A report published by a group of mainly African relief and advocacy groups, the Darfur Consortium, said the force was too small and inadequately funded. It said six months after the mission began, only about a third of the 26,000 personnel promised had been deployed. The five-year-old Darfur conflict has left some 300,000 people dead. The African Union-Union Nations Mission in Darfur (Unamid) was set up after the United Nations Security Council promised protection to some four million people caught up in the war between the Sudanese government and rebels. But Khartoum insisted that Africans should make up the bulk of the soldiers. Critically short The BBC's Mark Doyle says most of the troops came from an earlier underfunded solely African force and the hope was that UN involvement would improve logistics. The Darfur consortium says Unamid is "in danger of becoming the world's latest broken promise". It says the mission is still critically short of basic equipment such as helicopters and armoured vehicles. Some of the soldiers from the former African force were so badly supplied that they were reduced to putting blue plastic bags over their helmets to indicate that they now worked for the UN, the report says. The report adds that the soldiers who had deployed could do much better by, for example, mounting regular foot patrols in camps or consistently protecting women who collect firewood. The report cites several instances when Unamid soldiers observed violence against civilians without acting against it, and said commanders were inconsistent in interpreting the mission's mandate. The report also accuses the Sudanese government of blocking key deployments, and says rich countries have not given the peacekeepers enough equipment. Khartoum says the scale of the violence and suffering has been exaggerated by the west for political reasons. It denies charges that it organised the Arab Janjaweed militias, accused of widespread atrocities against Darfur's black African population. Source: BBC