Sudan said it ordered the military to stop fighting in the bloodied Darfur region even as rebels alleged new attacks and said they would uphold a boycott of stalemated peace talks.
"Orders were given last night to all the commanders to stop fighting," Sudan government delegation spokesman Ibrahim Mohammed Ibrahim said on Thursday by phone from the African Union-hosted conference in Nigeria's capital, Abuja.
PHOTO: AFP
Ibrahim said he wasn't sure if fighting had actually stopped in Darfur, where tens of thousands of people have died and nearly 2 million left homeless in a two-year crisis the UN has branded the world's gravest.
Rebels boycotted the latest round of talks on Monday over allegations of a new offensive against them, saying they would not talk with government mediators until the attacks stopped.
The insurgents said attacks continued on Thursday, citing field reports from the vast western Darfur region.
Bahar Ibrahim, spokesman for the rebel Sudanese Liberation Army, said government troops attacked the town of Tawila and several villages in northern Darfur.
"The government as of this morning is continuing its attacks," he said.
"Nothing has changed in the situation to make us return to the talks," said Ahmed Tugod Lissan of Sudan's other main rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement.
On Wednesday, the top government negotiator, Majzoub al-Khalifa Ahmad, said Sudan had accepted a proposal by African Union medi-ators to stop fighting if rebels withdrew from positions captured since the signing of an April cease-fire deal.
Delegates from the two rebel movements said they had received no formal notification of any such AU proposal and couldn't comment on it.
There is no official reckoning of the overall toll of the war, which was sparked in February last year when two non-Arab African rebel groups took up arms to fight for more power and resources from the Arab-dominated Khartoum government.
The Sudanese government responded by backing an Arab militia known as the Janjaweed, which is accused of targeting civilians in a campaign of murder, rape and arson.
Disease and hunger have killed 70,000 people in the western Darfur region since March, the World Health Organization says. Nearly 2 million are believed to have fled their homes since Darfur fell into crisis.
The US has accused Sudan's government of failing to take sufficient steps to rein in the Janjaweed, who are alleged to have committed genocide in Darfur.
A promised 3,000-member AU peace deployment for Darfur has so far managed to put some 800 soldiers and 100 observers in the field.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the