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Gunmen free prisoners in Darfur

Gunmen stormed a Darfur prison, setting free at least 90 detainees, officials and local media said on Monday as sporadic violence continued to erupt throughout the western Sudanese region.

A large group of armed men driving pickup trucks overran the prison in the South Darfur town of Buram, wounding two guards, the semiofficial Sudan Media Center and other media reported.

Sudanese police did not comment and would not say who the detainees were and why they were in prison.

But a UN official in South Darfur said the attack appeared to have been conducted by fighters from the Salamat tribe of nomadic Arabs, who escaped with several of the detainees, who also were believed to be Salamat.

The Salamat and other Darfur nomadic tribes are among the groups suspected of belonging to the janjaweed, an Arab militia that the Sudanese government is accused of having armed and funded to fight Darfur's ethnic African rebels.

However, several Arab tribes in Darfur have voiced increasing discontent with Khartoum, at times even turning against it and joining the rebels. Dozens of people have also been killed in recent months as Arab tribes, including the Salamat, turned against one another fighting for war spoils, especially in South Darfur.

Meanwhile, Sudanese warplanes have been bombing rebel positions around the town of Geneina for the past three days in a bid to break the siege on the West Darfur state capital, a rebel chief said on Monday.

"Antonov aircraft bombed positions near Salie, north of Geneina, on Monday," said Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the Justice and Equality Movement.

"Yesterday and the day before, aircraft of the same type bombed positions northwest of Geneina in the Abu Soruj and Sirf Jaj areas," he said.

There was no immediate confirmation of the air strikes from the Sudanese military or from the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force for Darfur, which did however acknowledge that tensions in the area were threatening relief operations.

Ibrahim said that rebel fighters had escaped the raids unharmed but added that there had been "several civilian casualties as well as damage and loss of livestock."

"Residents have been seeking cover from the air strikes under trees and in dry river beds," he said.

Ibrahim said his men had refrained from launching reprisal attacks against the army bases around Geneina for fear of hitting residential areas.

UN African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) spokesman Noureddine Mezni said that the tensions in West Darfur threatened not only relief operations but also the full deployment of the new peacekeeping force and the resumption of peace talks.
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