Warplanes bomb rebel positions

2008-01-15 10:19

Khartoum - 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, says a rebel chief.

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

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

There was no immediate confirmation of the air strikes from the Sudanese military or from the joint United Nations-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".

Tensions threaten relief operations

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

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

United Nations African Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) spokesperson 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.

UNAMID chief Rodolphe Adada held lengthy talks in Khartoum on Monday with UN envoy Jan Eliasson and his AU counterpart Salim Ahmed Salim to discuss the crisis, Mezni added.

When fully deployed, UNAMID was to become the UN's largest peacekeeping operation with 20 000 troops and 6 000 police and civilian personnel. Only about 9 000 troops and police were in place.

At least 200 000 people had died from the combined effects of war, famine and diseases and more than two million had fled their homes since the ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Sudan's Arab-dominated regime in February 2003.

- AFP