AU accuses Darfur rebels of deadly infighting

KHARTOUM, June 6 (AFP) — African Union peacekeepers accused ethnic minority rebels in Sudan’s western region of Darfur Monday of deadly infighting in the run-up to renewed peace talks with the government this week.

A rebel of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), fighting Sudanese troops, mans a post in the northern part of the western Sudanese Darfur. (AFP).

AU Mission in Sudan (AMIS) spokesman Noureddine Mezni demanded an immediate halt to the clashes between the two rebel groups which he said had left 11 people dead and 17 wounded last week.

“These acts of the rebel movements, especially the relentless pursuit and attacks on Justice and Equality Movement elements by the Sudan Liberation Army with heavy civilian collateral damage, are unacceptable and condemned in the strongest terms,” the spokesman said.

He described the fighting as “a serious breach” of the much violated ceasefire which the rebels signed with the government in April last year.

Mezni said that mission chief Baba Gana Kingibe had been “following with deep concern the deteriorating security situation in South Darfur.”

Kingibe held the SLM and JEM “exclusively responsible for the deteriorating security situation as their military elements have engaged in clashes for control of the territory,” he added.

The rebels should exercise “restraint at this moment” with the African Union preparing to convene a new round of peace talks with the government in Nigeria on Friday.

Mesni said the clashes had begun in March when SLM fighters attacked the JEM-held village of Muhajeriya in South Darfur state and chased their rivals out.

In response, JEM forces occupied Graida, also in South Darfur, “despite requests by AMIS forces for them to relocate some six kilometres (about four miles) outside.”

On Friday, SLM fighters attacked JEM positions in Graida with mortar rounds “killing 11 persons, wounding 17 others and burning several houses,” Mezni said.

Graida used to be under Sudanese government control, but Khartoum agreed to pull its forces out of the village in line with last year’s ceasefire, which stipulated that the area be demilitarised.

Mezni called on the rebels to “withdraw their forces completely from Graida and from locations taken over by AMIS forces or vacated by government troops.”

In recent weeks there have growing expressions of concern that the war between government forces and the rebels is being overtaken by ethnic conflict between Darfur’s myriad groups.

“This political conflict is being overshadowed more and more by a tribal conflict,” Dominik Stillhart, Sudan chief for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday, adding: “This is bad news for conflict resolution.”

Although they have maintained a common front through several rounds of peace talks, the two Darfur rebel groups have different backgrounds.

Mainly active in North Darfur, the JEM draws support from the Zaghawa minority and is said to have links with Sudan’s Islamist opposition.

The SLM draws more of its support from sedentary groups in the south and centre and joined mainstream opposition parties in the National Democratic Alliance with southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.