|
Sudanese rebels say they downed choppers
Rebels in western Sudan said Thursday they shot down two army helicopters and cut off roads leading to the Darfur regionâs main city, disputing the Sudanese presidentâs claim that the military crushed the yearlong insurgency. The fighting comes after the Sudanese government canceled plans to attend scheduled peace talks in Geneva next week with western rebels. A presidential spokesman said President Omar el-Bashir wanted the peace talks held in Sudan. In the days after el-Bashirâs victory claim, the rebels have been launching hit-and-run raids against government positions around el-Fasher, the capital of northern Darfur, said Abdulrahman Zakaria Hassib, a spokesman for Gibril Abdulkarim, a senior commander in the rebel Justice and Equality Movement.JEM forces are fighting alongside another rebel group - the Sudan Liberation Army - and about half of the combined 27,000 troops are involved in the current attacks, Hassib told The Associated Press from an unidentified location along the Chad-Sudan border. The rebels are using small arms and rocket-propelled grenades. The rebels currently are moving south and east of el-Fasher to cut off the roads linking Khartoum, the Sudanese capital, and Nyala, the main city in southern Darfur, Hassib said. =The army helicopters were shot down Monday near el-Fasher, about 500 miles southwest of Khartoum. Hassib did not know whether there were any government casualties. "We donât count the government casualties, we just take whatever we can take from them, vehicles, ammunition, weapons," he said. Zakaria Mohammed Ali, JEM secretary-general, said the rebel actions were intended to prove that the rebellion had not been crushed. "He (el-Bashir) doesnât want to talk about peace so we will teach him a lesson ... until he accepts peace," Ali said from Germany. He said the rebels will only negotiate with the government in a neutral venue outside Sudan under international mediation. Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-02-13 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=26148 |