Four locally employed staff working for Swiss-based aid agency Medair have gone missing in the western Darfur region, the organisation announced on 18 November. The aid workers and a government official did not return from a mission near the town of Kolbus on 11 November, director of Medair Erik Volkmar, said. 'They are still missing and we are very much hoping they are still alive,' Volkmar told AFP. 'We have some contact with different actors in the region. I don't want to comment further.' Nine locally employed workers of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) were killed in the western Darfur region in mid October by local warring tribes. The men had been travelling to temporary camps, which house some of the many thousands of refugees displaced by the war in southern Sudan, when their convoy was attacked by local militiamen (MEED 27:10:03).