Heavy fighting in southern Darfur has killed scores of rebels and government forces over the past week, and the Sudanese air force has bombed several villages, rebels and international observers in Darfur reported.
The clashes began Aug. 1 when a coalition of rebels, including members of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), captured the strategic town of Adila, where Sudanese troops were stationed to protect the only railway linking Darfur to Sudan's capital, Khartoum, rebels said.
The Sudanese army and its allied janjaweed militias "were summarily defeated, leaving behind heavy weapons and ammunition," JEM said in a statement.
PHOTO: AFP
The group said the offensive was led by Abdelazziz Ushar, a Darfur field commander previously fighting a separate rebellion in eastern Sudan.
A senior international observer in Darfur said on Thursday that Sudanese forces had recaptured Adila, located near South Darfur's border with the neighboring region of Khordofan, but reported clashes were ongoing.
"It seems over 100 [Sudanese] soldiers or janjaweed have been killed," the official said on the telephone.
At least 10 rebels were killed and 15 injured, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Rebels said they launched the offensive because the janjaweed were burning villages in the area.
The African Union mission in Darfur confirmed there had been heavy fighting, but said it had no further details.
Rebels and international observers said the fighters seized more than 50 government vehicles and some heavy armaments during the offensive.
Meanwhile, Sudan's air force bombed at least four villages in the area this week, observers and rebels said, but there were no reports of casualties because many of the civilians have fled.
One of JEM's leaders said his group shot down a government MIG-29 fighter jet on Wednesday that was participating in the bombings, a claim denied by the government and disputed by other rebels.
Abdullahi el-Tom said the aircraft's wreckage had been found 4.5km south of Adila, but the pilot had not been located.
Rebels from a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement fighting alongside JEM told international observers the jet crashed because of a mechanical problem.
Army spokesman General Osman Mohamed al-Agbash denied that rebels had downed a government jet, but indicated the military had faced heavy fighting in Adila.
"JEM wants to tell the international community that the army has used air bombing in [the] recapturing of Adila," the Sudan Media Center, a news service deemed close to the government, quoted al-Agbash as saying.
There was no comment on military casualties.
Military flights are banned over Darfur by several UN resolutions and peace agreements, and Sudanese authorities routinely deny conducting air raids.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir visited Darfur last month and said the region was largely pacified. But the UN mission in Sudan said there have been clashes between rebels and the government in northern Darfur in recent days.
The heavy fighting in Adila came as the UN and African Union sponsored a Darfur rebel conference in Arusha, Tanzania, to relaunch talks with the government after a peace agreement in May last year between Khartoum and one rebel faction proved largely ineffective.
The UN Security Council on Thursday welcomed "the substantial progress made" at last week's conference and called on all parties "to move from pre-negotiations to negotiations as soon as possible."
The council also called on the parties "to demonstrate their commitment to the political process through concrete actions, in particular cessation of hostilities."
With much pomp and circumstance, Cairo is today to inaugurate the long-awaited Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM), widely presented as the crowning jewel on authorities’ efforts to overhaul the country’s vital tourism industry. With a panoramic view of the Giza pyramids plateau, the museum houses thousands of artifacts spanning more than 5,000 years of Egyptian antiquity at a whopping cost of more than US$1 billion. More than two decades in the making, the ultra-modern museum anticipates 5 million visitors annually, with never-before-seen relics on display. In the run-up to the grand opening, Egyptian media and official statements have hailed the “historic moment,” describing the
‘CHILD PORNOGRAPHY’: The doll on Shein’s Web site measure about 80cm in height, and it was holding a teddy bear in a photo published by a daily newspaper France’s anti-fraud unit on Saturday said it had reported Asian e-commerce giant Shein (希音) for selling what it described as “sex dolls with a childlike appearance.” The French Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control (DGCCRF) said in a statement that the “description and categorization” of the items on Shein’s Web site “make it difficult to doubt the child pornography nature of the content.” Shortly after the statement, Shein announced that the dolls in question had been withdrawn from its platform and that it had launched an internal inquiry. On its Web site, Le Parisien daily published a
China’s Shenzhou-20 crewed spacecraft has delayed its return mission to Earth after the vessel was possibly hit by tiny bits of space debris, the country’s human spaceflight agency said yesterday, an unusual situation that could disrupt the operation of the country’s space station Tiangong. An impact analysis and risk assessment are underway, the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) said in a statement, without providing a new schedule for the return mission, which was originally set to land in northern China yesterday. The delay highlights the danger to space travel posed by increasing amounts of debris, such as discarded launch vehicles or vessel
RUBBER STAMP? The latest legislative session was the most productive in the number of bills passed, but critics attributed it to a lack of dissenting voices On their last day at work, Hong Kong’s lawmakers — the first batch chosen under Beijing’s mantra of “patriots administering Hong Kong” — posed for group pictures, celebrating a job well done after four years of opposition-free politics. However, despite their smiles, about one-third of the Legislative Council will not seek another term in next month’s election, with the self-described non-establishment figure Tik Chi-yuen (狄志遠) being among those bowing out. “It used to be that [the legislature] had the benefit of free expression... Now it is more uniform. There are multiple voices, but they are not diverse enough,” Tik said, comparing it
RSS