W.Sudan rebels accuse army of massacring civilians

NAIROBI, Jan 3 (Reuters) – Rebels in western Sudan on Saturday accused government forces of massacring civilians in a village in the remote Darfur region where they also claimed to have captured a town, killing 200 soldiers.

The Sudan Liberation Movement/Army (SLM/A) said government forces on Friday killed 200 civilians, including children and elderly people, in an attack on Sorra village, and called for urgent help for thousands of people uprooted by the fighting.

It was not possible to verify the accusation.

“I’m calling the international community to investigate this genocide immediately, and the very, very terrible humanitarian situation,” SLM/A chairman Abdel-Wahid Mohammed Ahmed el-Nur said.

He said about 4,000 villagers had been forced to flee into the wilderness around another six villages near Sorra for fear of attack, joining hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by fighting in western Sudan this year.

“People are living as if they are animals in the mountains and valleys. Nobody has sent anything to them,” he told Reuters by satellite telephone from western Sudan.

SLM Secretary-General Minni Arcuo Minnawi also told Reuters by satellite telephone the SLM had captured the town of Sherya, 70 km (44 miles) east of Nyala, the capital of southern Darfur.

Government officials were not immediately available for comment.

SLM forces had killed about 200 soldiers in the two-hour battle for the town, Minnawi said. “The situation is quiet. It’s under our control,” he said. Sixteen rebels had been killed in the fighting, he added.

The United Nations says more than 600,000 people have fled fighting in the arid Darfur region, a remote area bordering Chad where humanitarian workers have only a limited presence.

The conflict in Darfur has escalated this year despite progress towards ending a 20-year civil war between the Sudanese government and rebels in the south of the giant country.