West Sudan rebels say kill govt. troops in attack

KHARTOUM, March 14 (Reuters) – Sudanese rebels said on Sunday they had killed an unspecified number of government soldiers in an attack on a town in the western Darfur region.

In February last year, two rebel groups launched a revolt in remote Darfur, accusing the government of neglecting the poor area and arming Arab militias to loot and burn African villages.

A local government official told a Khartoum newspaper the rebels killed two policemen and injured three other security force members in an attack on a police post in Buram on Saturday. He appeared to be referring to the same attack.

A spokesman from the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) told Reuters they had attacked Sudanese military bases in Buram, about 900 km southwest of Khartoum, on Saturday evening and now controlled the town.

“The majority of the Sudanese army in Buram died and the others fled on foot,” SLM spokesman Muhamed Mursal said from Darfur. “‘Til now we have not exactly the number of dead.”

While Khartoum announced the end of major military operations early last month, saying the rebels were defeated, witnesses reported aerial bombardments on Friday and Saturday in Southern Darfur, not far from Buram.

Adam Hamid Musa, governor of Southern Darfur state told the privately-owned Akbar Al Youm newspaper the rebels used seven vehicles to attack the police post in Buram. The rebels torched the base and Buram’s post office and cut off telecommunication links to the town, he added.

“(There was) an attack by the remnants of groups of armed rebels on the town of Buram,” Musa was quoted as saying.

The United Nations warns of a humanitarian crisis in Darfur and estimates one million people are affected by the fighting with more than 100,000 refugees fleeing over the border to Chad.