 Years of violence over Sudan's war-torn Darfur region further escalated Thursday when government forces and the only rebel group to have signed a peace agreement aimed at ending the violence in the western region clashed in the capital's affluent twin city, the head of the UN in Sudan said. Tensions between Sudanese authorities and the rebel faction, whose leader joined the government after signing the Darfur Peace Agreement in May, degenerated into an open shootout in Omdurman, located across the Nile River from the capital of Khartoum, said Jan Pronk, who leads the UN's Sudanese mission. "The situation in Darfur is becoming worse and worse, that it has now reached Khartoum is just another proof of how bad things are," Pronk said. |