Rebel groups kill 40 in Darfur – report

Oct 2, 2006 (LONDON) — Up to 40 people were killed in clashes between rebel groups in south Darfur, forcing foreign aid workers to abandon the Greida displaced persons’ camp, the Guardian newspaper reported on its Web site on Monday.

An African Union spokesman in Khartoum confirmed a flare-up in fighting in Greida, but put the death toll at 11 people, mostly civilians.

Fighters loyal to the Justice and Equality Movement, one of two rebel factions that did not sign a May peace agreement, used mortars and heavy machines to attack men from a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), which signed the deal, the report said.

The report said the fighting appears to be the worst since the peace deal was signed in May.

“Exchanges of fire lasted for three to four hours. It was only a mile from the town. It happened on Friday,” the Guardian quoted an official from one of several aid agencies which withdrew from Greida to Nyala, the regional capital, at the weekend.

Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for the African Union which maintains a 7,000-strong force in Darfur, said 11 people, including an elderly man, were killed in “factional fighting that included elements from the Sudan Liberation Movement”.

He said unknown gunmen opened fire on a senior SLM official who was visiting Greida with senior field commanders “in the framework of the peace agreement.” The official took cover at an AU position in the area, Mezni told Reuters.

“Last year we demanded that all armed elements leave Greida but they have not done that yet, we demand again that they do so,” he said in a telephone interview.

The SLA is also known as the SLM.

An estimated 130,000 people displaced by the conflict in Darfur live in the camp beside Greida. The United Nations said it had unconfirmed reports that the situation was worsening in Greida, and that heavy shooting there reported last week was the result of a tribal conflict.

As many as 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million forced from their homes by the fighting that began in 2003 when rebels took up arms against the government charging it with neglect.

Efforts to stem the violence through the intervention of a U.N. force have been stymied by Khartoum’s refusal to allow international peacekeepers into its western region.

European diplomats were in Sudan over the weekend and in Addis Ababa on Monday to try to break the impasse to ensure a security vacuum does not occur when the mandate for AU forces ends on Dec. 31.

(Reuters)