More than 50 soldiers, militiamen killed, SLA rebels say
CAIRO, Feb 28 (AFP) — Rebels in Sudan’s western Darfur region said Saturday they have killed more than 50 soldiers and pro-government militiamen in response to an army offensive.
“Our forces have won a victory against government forces and their allied militias in repelling an offensive against villages in the Karnei region,” a spokesman for the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) told AFP by telephone here.
The Karnei region is 90 kilometres (56 miles) from Al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state.
SLM spokesman Hassan Ibrahim said “more than 50 soldiers and members of pro-government militias were killed” and that the SLM had snatched arms and munitions during the military raid with air support from Antonov planes.
Hassan insisted there was daily fighting in Darfur, contradicting an announcement by Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir on February 9 that his army had taken full control of Darfur and major military operations were over.
Beshir called for a general amnesty throughout the region, provided that all rebels surrender their weapons to police within a month.
About 3,000 people have been killed and another 670,000 displaced within Sudan itself by the war in Darfur, pitting government troops and their Arab militia allies against rebels drawn mainly from the area’s non-Arab minorities.
Another 100,000 Sudanese are estimated to have fled to neighboring Chad because of the rebellion, which erupted a year ago over the government’s alleged economic neglect of the region.
Hassan called Saturday on “the international community to send an investigative commission to Darfur to verify the ethnic cleansing policy that the government is conducting” against the indigenous tribes of the region.
The SLM said on February 14 that dozens of civilians were killed in an offensive by the Sudanese army and pro-government militias against villages in the region of Kotum, in North Darfur.
Darfur’s rebel groups — the Justice and Equality Movement, the Sudan Liberation Movement and the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance — are seeking negotiations with Khartoum along the lines of those being held with the southern rebel movement, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, on sharing wealth and power.
Meanwhile, the Sudanese humanitarian affairs minister Ibrahim Mahmud Hamid on Saturday described the security and humanitarian situation in Darfur region as “stable”.
“The humanitarian and security situation in Darfur is now stable and all roads of access to areas in need of relief are open,” he told a meeting he held in Khartoum.
“We cannot claim that the Darfur problem has now been resolved but we can say that the situation has now improved and is much better than what it used to be,” he said.
Thousands of tonnes of food and non-food aid has been moved to the Darfur region by the ministry in collaboration with donors, United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations since the president’s declaration of an end to major military operations
there, he added.