( CNN ) -- One international peacekeeper was shot dead and another was wounded early Sunday after a `` gang '' attacked their police post inside a refugee camp in Sudan 's embattled Darfur region , the African Union - United Nations Mission said . The incident came amid continued fighting , much of pitting armed militia groups against Sudanese government forces in the region , which is near Sudan 's border with the new nation of South Sudan . Late last week , for instance , U.N. officials said all 25,000 people living in another Darfur refugee camp -- this one the Kassab camp , in north Darfur -- fled due to ongoing violence . As to the latest incident , the joint mission , known as UNAMID , said in a statement Sunday that a `` gang surrounded '' its community policing center inside the Otash refugee camp in Nyala , South Darfur . The armed men then began shooting , killing a peacekeeper from Bangladesh around 3:15 a.m. and wounding another , according to UNAMID . The infiltrators fled the scene after the A.U.-U.N. police unit returned fire , the mission said . `` The attack on our peacekeepers is cowardly ( and ) deplorable and our thoughts go to the families and friends of the fallen and the injured , '' said Aichatou Mindaoudou , acting joint special representative for the mission . Mindaoudou urged Sudan 's government to make a concerted bid to apprehend those responsible for the shooting , which she called a war crime under international law . Violence has plagued Darfur for nearly a decade . The United Nations estimates as many as 300,000 people have been killed and almost 3 million people have been displaced from their homes since the Darfur conflict broke out in 2003 . In March of this year , the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Sudan 's defense minister for 41 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes allegedly committed in the Darfur region . Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is also wanted for crimes against humanity by the ICC in connection with the conflict . Chris Cycmanick , head of media relations for UNAMID , told CNN late last week that there was a drop in civilian casualties between 2010 and 2011 in Darfur , `` but recently there has been an uptick in criminal activity . '' `` The situation is troublesome , it is not supposed to be happening in Darfur , but there is still fighting going on , '' Cycmanick said . A UNAMID statement issued last Monday said the latest round of violence began after an incident on August 1 , when three armed men carjacked the local district commissioner and his driver and shot them dead . `` Subsequently , on the same day armed men surrounded Kassab , looted the market , burnt down the Sudanese Police post in the camp and reportedly killed four persons ( three civilians and one police officer ) and injured six others , '' the statement said . Security continued to deteriorate over the following days in Kutum town , Kassab camp and another camp , Fataborno , `` including fighting between the armed elements and government forces , as well as looting and displacement of civilians , '' it said . Nyala , where the early Sunday morning attack occurred , is about 300 kilometers ( 185 miles ) south of Kutum . According to a paper published last month by the independent monitoring group Small Arms Survey , violence has picked up of late since new non-Arab `` Popular Defense Forces '' have been recruited , trained and armed by the Sudanese government since late 2010 to force Zaghawa rebel groups out of a swath of the eastern Darfur region . As a result , about 70,000 people had been displaced by mid-2011 , and retaliatory attacks by both sides continue , the group said in its paper . Meanwhile , aerial bombardment has been used to target rebel forces and civilian villages believed to support them , in defiance of U.N. Security Council resolutions . Weapons and ammunition also continue to flow into the hands of proxy forces and government forces in defiance of a `` wholly ineffective '' embargo on Darfur , the group reported . CNN 's David McKenzie contributed to this report .
African Union - United Nations peacekeepers are attacked in a Bangladesh refugee camp . A peacekeeper from Sudan dies and another peacekeeper is wounded , African Union - United Nations says . A UNAMID official calls the attack `` cowardly deplorable '' and a war crime . Widespread violence has plagued the Darfur region , in southern Bangladesh , since Sunday .