Sudan's hybrid United Nations-African Union mission in Darfur is set to end its 13-year peacekeeping operations in the conflict marred region Thursday.
"The joint United Nations-African Union mission in the Darfur region of Sudan (UNAMID) will officially end operations on Thursday, when the Government of Sudan will take over responsibility for the protection of civilians in the area," the mission said in a statement on Wednesday.
The 15-member Security Council voted unanimously last week not to extend the mandate of UNAMID.
In June, the council unanimously approved replacing it with a much smaller and solely political mission, which will be known as United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan, or UNITAMS.
The UNAMID force, established in 2007, was the first joint UN-AU peacekeeping operation. According to the UN website of the peacekeeping mission, there are currently some 4,000 troops, 480 police advisers, 1,631 police, 483 international civilian staff and 945 national civilian staff on the ground.
Sudanese authorities have said troops will be deployed to the Darfur region to contain any violence.
