12 killed as Darfur rebels seize town in Sudan’s Kordofan
July 4, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — Twelve people were killed, including two women, as a Darfur rebel group seized a town in central Sudan, threatening a longstanding truce, officials said Tuesday.
The Sudanese army said the town of Hamrat al-Sheikh in North Kordofan province was attacked Monday by forces linked to the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM).
Hamrat al-Sheikh is on the road between Khartoum and North Kordofan’s main town al-Obeid. It is around 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Sudan’s capital.
The attack came despite a truce between the Khartoum government and Darfur rebels since April 2004. It is one of the worst violations of the truce as well as a widening of the conflict.
On Friday 30 June, JEM formed a new alliance last week called the National Redemption Front (NRF) with breakaway SLM commanders and a small political party, the Sudan Federal Democratic Alliance.
Adam Ali Shogar, one of the SLA commanders in the NRF, told Reuters “God willing, we will be on our way to Khartoum,” he said. “The government has shown it is not committed to the 2004 humanitarian ceasefire so this deal now has no meaning.”
Residents fled as police and security forces, backed by air support, joined forces to repel the attack, it said in a statement. Fighting was “going on till late Monday night to liberate the town from the armed men”.
Provincial governor Faisal Hassan Ibrahim told reporters by telephone that eight policemen, two security men and two women were killed in the fighting, during which several public buildings were destroyed.
The rebels attacked the town with 50 trucks armed with heavy weapons, some of which were posted outside Hamrat al-Sheikh to seal it off, he said.
The African Union-mediated Darfur peace agreement aims to end more than three years of war in the western region of Darfur that has killed an estimated 300,000 people and displaced 2.4 million others.
Officials from the groups created the National Redemption Front (NRF) after talks in the Eritrean capital and reaffirmed their opposition to the Abuja agreement.
According to the Khartoum daily Al-Sahafa, the NRF claimed the attack on the town of Hamrat al-Sheikh.
“The parties which have not signed the Abuja agreement wanted to deliver a message to the government they are a force that cannot be ignored and that they are demanding a comprehensive peace,” NRF leaders said in the claim.
Al-Sahafa quoted an NSF field commander, Abubakr Hamid, as saying his forces would “withdraw from the town today (Tuesday), or tomorrow in two groups, one heading east towards Khartoum and another north toward the Northern State.”
The Front “possesses a strike force that can reach any region in the Sudan,” he warned, while insisting the attack was not a violation of the ceasefire agreement which he said “applies only to Darfur.”
The escalation came as the AU agreed to extend by three months its Darfur peacekeeping mission, scheduled to wind up at the end of September, to allow more time for Khartoum to accept the force being replaced by a UN deployment.
(ST)