Sudan orders air strikes on Darfur before arrival of UN force
Jan 7, 2006 (LONDON) — The attacks are in breach of UN Security Council resolution 1591, passed The Sudanese government has unleashed a fresh aerial bombing campaign in Darfur in an attempt to inflict as much damage as possible on rebel forces before United Nations troops arrive in the region.
Antonov bombers and helicopter gunships are reported to have attacked villages and fired on civilians in open defiance of UN efforts to bring an end to the fighting.
in March 2005, forbidding “offensive military flights in and over the Darfur region”. The new surge of attacks is targeting rebel strongholds throughout Darfur, where militias have secured key territories.
The African Union force commander, Major Gen Luke Aprezi, confirmed the attacks and said they followed talks with rebel groups in which he agreed a ceasefire commitment that he now fears may no longer hold. In October, The Sunday Telegraph witnessed Sudanese soldiers loading bombs on to Antonov aircraft at El Fasher air base in North Darfur before a number of villages were attacked.
Last week, new arrivals at the Otash camp in the South Darfur capital, Nyala, said they were forced to flee their villages when government helicopter gunships opened fire on them.
“Out of nowhere, helicopters were over the village firing at us,” said Asir Ibrahim, who fled his home near the southern town of Buram.
“I called my wife and children from my home and we starting running. Some people were hit, but it was such mayhem I don’t know what happened to many of them. I don’t know whether they fled or were killed.”
Under the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) signed in Abuja, Nigeria, last May, Sudan had agreed not to carry out aerial attacks in Darfur. But rebel groups say Sudanese Antonov bombers have been conducting raids on Jebel Marra and the North Darfur regions of Anka, Um Rai and Kutum.
A senior Sudanese Liberation Army commander told The Sunday Telegraph: “We were prepared to adopt a ceasefire. Just two days later our positions were bombed by the government.
“These kind of attacks are what we have come to expect from Khartoum, they are doing what they can before the UN arrives.”
Escalations in fighting and government aerial attacks often happen when new peace agreements or resolutions are signed.
“When a deadline is set for there to be a change in what is happening in Darfur, the number of attacks on villages and towns increases along with clashes between rebel groups and the government,” said one aid worker.
“With the latest resolution, it now looks imminent that UN troops will be on the ground here. But every time there has been any progress in terms of peace agreements, you can be sure that factions of rebel groups and the government will do what they can to secure territories for their own and weaken the other side.”
The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, has pledged to focus his “highest attention” on Darfur in the hope of finding a peaceful solution to the three-year conflict, which has claimed the lives of as many as 400,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. The UN initially proposed sending a peacekeeping force of 22,000 troops to the region, but Khartoum has continued to resist its deployment, insisting instead that only African troops supported by UN technical and logistical experts would be acceptable.
The Sudanese president, Omar al-Bashir, has made it clear that the UN force will only be granted access on a conditional basis, stipulating that the African Union, which currently has an under-equipped and underfunded force of 7,000 in Darfur, must remain in control of operations on the ground.
UN aid organisations in Darfur say they have been told that Sudan has also said that there must be no senior UN officials in the region, only junior officials who would act under orders from the AU.
UN officials in Darfur say they have not been told when they will be seeing the blue berets of the UN troops but only that the troops that come are likely to be made up of soldiers from African nations.
One UN official added: “The implementation of the latest resolution will prove challenging, with AU commanders in certain regions of Darfur not wanting to concede that they need support from the incoming UN troops.”
In the meantime, Sudanese forces are using the interim period to attack the territories held by rebels who have not signed up to the DPA and are therefore legitimate targets.
(Sunday Telegraph)