Ammon News - AMMonnews – A Jordanian police officer deployed with the UN mission in Darfur died, shot by armed men, on Sunday, the media office of the Public Security Department (PSD) said.

The PSD statement said Major Talal Rjoub, an engineer, was on duty when militants started shooting at a UN patrol in Darfur, killing Rjoub and another member of the unit, a Senegalese national.

The media office said the UN mission in Darfur started investigating the incident.

The PSD paid tribute to Rjoub who, according to the statement, held several positions at the police department.

The media office did not specify when the officer was deployed to join with the African Union-UN Hybrid Operation in Darfur (UNAMID).

More than 12 peacekeepers from the UNAMID have been killed in the region in the past five months, according to Agence France-Presse.

In January, two Jordanian peacekeepers were released after being abducted in August 2012 in Sudan’s Darfur.

Sergeant Hassan Mazawdeh and Corporal Qassem Sarhan were with a team of peacekeepers who went to buy supplies for the camp from a market in Kabkabiya, near the North Darfur state capital Al Fashir and were reported missing when they failed to rendezvous with their colleagues two hours later.

A PSD investigation revealed that the two peacekeepers had been kidnapped by a group of outlaws, but for financial, not ideological reasons, and that the kidnappers did not belong to any armed or organised gang.

The UN-African Union mission has more than 25,000 troops and police in Darfur, according to AFP.

More than 3,000 members of the Jordan Armed Forces (JAF) serve with international peacekeepers around the world, the agency said.

Jordanian peacekeepers are stationed in several parts of the world, mainly in Congo, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire and Haiti.

“Jordan has the second largest peacekeeping force working under UNAMID in Darfur,” a security official told AFP without giving precise figures.

According to JAF, Jordan participated between 1989 and January this year, in 19 peacekeeping or monitoring missions involving more than 100,000 soldiers and commissioned and non-commissioned officers.

Their missions entail humanitarian assistance and local community development.