| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Africa: East | |
| Sudan launches offensive against Darfour rebels | |
| 2003-11-05 | |
Sudan has launched an offensive against rebels in the west. The Sudanese military, confirming earlier rebel claims, reported that combat jets and helicopters struck positions of the Sudanese Liberation Army in the Darfour province. It was the first military operation by the Khartoum regime in the two-month-old ceasefire. Sudanese military spokesman Gen. Mohammed Bashir Suleiman said the air strikes were meant to stop an effort by the SLM/A to improve its positions in Darfur. The SLA captured several cities during battles in the summer of 2003. "We noticed suspicious movements of the armed groups belonging to the Justice and Equality group in an area not covered by the ceasefire signed in Abeche with the SLM/A," Suleiman said on Sunday. "The issue was resolved militarily through air strikes."
| |
| Posted by:Fred Pruitt |
| #1 Since the start of the civil war that began in 1983 -- and which pits the African South against the Arab North -- the Khartoum governments on countless occasions have broken cease-fires with the southerners. Now the riverain Arabs who dominate the Sudanese political scene are pulling the same trick on an incipient rebel insurgency in Western Sudan. This time with the help of abbala (camel) and baggara (cattle) Arab tribes the Sudanese military are determined to crush the Islamized Africans from the Fur, Berti, Zaghawa and other tribes. And to think, with just a handful of helicopter gunships and a dozen mercenaries the civil war in the south would have been over years ago, and in the present case the Sudanese military would turn tail and run like hell from Darfur. |
| Posted by: Anonymous 2003-11-5 8:55:13 AM |