Police ring Khartoum area after clash with ex-rebels

March 25, 2007 (KHARTOUM) — Police surrounded an area in Sudan’s capital Khartoum on Sunday, one day after 11 people were killed in clashes between former Darfur rebels and security forces following a traffic accident, residents said.

The clashes erupted after the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), a Darfur rebel group which last year signed a peace deal with the government, refused to hand over members involved in the traffic accident in the area of Omdurman to police on Saturday.

The incident had threatened the fragile peace accord, amid complaints by the SLM that the government lacked the political will to implement it.

Residents said Khartoum’s twin city of Omdurman remained tense following the clash in which more than 40 SLM members were detained. They said most residents stayed home.

“The police are still surrounding the area and there are four tanks,” said one resident who gave her name only as Rasha.

SLM spokesman Al-Tayyib Khamis said the death toll had risen to 11 on Sunday, including eight SLM soldiers, one woman and two policemen.

He said that the Sudanese cabinet was holding a meeting to discuss the crisis. SLM leader Minni Arcua Minnawi, who had been appointed a senior assistant to President Omar Hassan al-Bashir with special responsibilities for Darfur, was attending the meeting, he said.

“We will wait and see what they decide,” he said.

On Saturday, Khamis said the SLM saw the massive police operation as a “declaration of war” and that the SLM was ready to respond.

Police said they had arrested 41 SLM soldiers, but Khamis put the figure at 61.

Experts estimate that 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million driven from their homes in four year of fighting in Darfur, where low-level conflict and insecurity continues despite the unpopular 2006 deal.

(Reuters)