NYALA, Sudan — The UN humanitarian chief hurriedly left a Darfur refugee camp Monday when demonstrators demanding the deployment of UN peacekeepers attacked a translator, accusing him of supporting the feared Janjaweed militia, a UN spokeswoman said.

Jan Egeland cut short his visit to Kalma camp, near the city of Nyala in south Darfur, spokeswoman Dawn Blalock said. Some in a crowd of about 1,000 protesters manhandled a translator in Egeland's entourage who they suspected had previously worked for the pro-government militia blamed for widespread atrocities in Darfur, she said.

The demonstrators thought the translator had misinterpreted what they were saying to members of Egeland's entourage, Blalock said.

The translator was not injured, but colleagues put him into a van for his own safety, Blalock told The Associated Press by phone.

The demonstrators then picked up sticks and broke the windows of the van and another vehicle in Egeland's convoy, which left the camp to return to Nyala.

The translator, who was not identified, is employed by Oxfam which had several staffers travelling with Egeland. The British-based non-governmental organization (NGO) promptly withdrew its six staffers from Kalma camp.

"We did not evacuate,'' Blalock stressed. "The program was cut short because tensions were too much.''

Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, had gone to Kalma to meet leaders of at least 90,000 residents of the camp as well as representatives of the NGOs. His visit came days after Sudan's government and the main rebel group in the country's western Darfur region signed a peace agreement to end fighting which has killed nearly 200,000 people since 2003.

An Associated Press reporter in the camp said Egeland was met by a huge crowd chanting pro-UN, pro-U.S. and anti-government slogans.

The demonstrators, mostly women, shouted: "Yes to international troops!'' -- a reference to the western proposal for UN peacekeepers to be deployed in Darfur.

As the entourage was leaving the camp, they attacked a UN vehicle with sticks and knives, because they thought the translator had said something that did not reflect what they had said in Arabic against Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. The violence prompted Egeland and his entourage to quickly leave the camp.

Until the signing of the peace accord on Friday, the Sudanese government had refused to host a large UN peacekeeping force to take over from the relatively small African Union operation that is now operating in Darfur.

Blalock said there had been tension in Kalma camp because of the absence of a camp co-ordinator. The government expelled the last co-ordinator, an official of the Norwegian Refugee Committee, in early April, she said.

After his arrival in Darfur on Sunday, Egeland warned that the peace treaty would not be easy to implement.

"We are now in the centre of the war which is still going on,'' Egeland told Associated Press Television News. "The world should have no illusions that peace will break out easily here in Darfur. We have to have an enormous effort from the international community and the parties themselves to enforce this peace agreement.''

Egeland was speaking during a visit to another camp for some of the two million people who have fled their homes during the three-year rebellion and counterinsurgency. Another 180,000 have died, mainly from disease and hunger.

The United Nations says that rebel-held areas near the camps that Egeland visited Sunday had seen major attacks by the pro-government militia that had forced some 200,000 people to flee in the past three months.

Combatants seemed to have been expecting a treaty to come out of the long-running negotiations in Nigeria and were jockeying to take control of territory before a ceasefire.

Egeland said Sunday that thousands of people had been displaced by fighting in recent days and added there could be more fighting.

Aid workers have repeatedly complained that the government has prevented them from working, and that fighting has made it impossible for them to help civilians.

Egeland was barred by the Sudanese government from visiting Darfur and Sudan's capital of Khartoum in April.

Decades of low-level tribal clashes over land and water in Darfur erupted into large-scale violence in early 2003 when members of the African ethnic tribes rose in revolt and demanded regional autonomy. The government is accused unleashing the Janjaweed who have been blamed for widespread killing, rape and destruction.

The government has repeatedly denied supporting the Arab militia.