Witnesses say aircraft bomb village in W. Sudan

KHARTOUM, May 28 (Reuters) – Villagers in west Sudan said Sudanese aircraft bombed their village on Friday and killed at least 11 people, but a local airport official denied there had been any attack.

The witnesses told Reuters by mobile and satellite telephone from the area that an Antonov plane and helicopters bombed the village of Tabit, about 40 km (25 miles) southwest of al-Fashir, the capital of Northern Darfur state. A rebel official also reported an aerial attack.

“There were two helicopters and one Antonov and they started bombarding the market,” said one witness, asking not to be identified, adding that he could see 12 bodies after the attack on Friday afternoon. Others said 11 or more were killed.

An official at Al-Fashir airport who asked not to be named said no planes had taken off from the airfield.

“There has been no aerial bombardment. These people are lying. We are going to hear a lot of these kinds of lies in the future,” the official said by telephone.

Independent verification is hard to obtain in the remote Darfur region, where fighting between rebels and the government has raged for more than a year.

In the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, Sudan’s government and the two main rebel groups fighting in Darfur agreed on Friday for international observers to deploy to monitor ceasefire and human rights violations.