Former Darfur rebels clash with police in Khartoum

Sept 29, 2006 (KHARTOUM) — The main former rebel group from the Darfur region of western Sudan took two policemen hostage in the capital on Thursday night after police arrested three of its own members, rebel officials said.

Several people were wounded in the confrontation, which ended with the release of all five people, said officials of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which signed a peace agreement with Khartoum in May and has joined the government.

The dispute began when police arrested the three SLM members outside party offices in Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city, and detained them at a nearby police station, they said.

“The police action was illegal because they did not have warrants. There was also no justification for the arrests,” Yacoub Asala, member of the SLM leadership, told Reuters.

In response to the arrests, the SLM leadership sent a group of soldiers from its own militia to the police station to demand the release of the three men.

When the police refused, the militiamen took away the police chief and another policeman as hostages, resulting in a gunfight in which several people were wounded.

An Interior Ministry statement said that a group of people attacked a police station in Omdurman in an attempt to free suspects and when they failed, they abducted a policeman.

“Police pursued the group to a house, clashed with them, freed the policeman and arrested members of the group without any deaths,” the statement added.

The leader of the SLM, Minni Arcua Minnawi, is now the fourth ranking member of the presidency in Khartoum under the shaky peace agreement signed in the Nigerian capital Abuja.

(Reuters)