A rebel group in eastern Sudan has accused the army of launching an attack on Wednesday on its camps in the Hamesh Koreb region, sparking clashes that left casualties.
”Troops backed by warplanes attacked our camps in Hamesh Koreb,” near the border with Eritrea, the secretary general of the Beja Congress, Abdullah Mussa, said.
”Many victims” were left among rebel fighters who confronted the troops, said Mussa, without giving details.
The Beja Congress and another rebel group, the Free Lions, formed an alliance called the Eastern Front in 2005. They accuse the Khartoum government of marginalising their region.
”We will not give up Hamesh Koreb,” said Mussa, charging Khartoum is aiming to sabotage peace talks scheduled to take place in Libya in late January.
Under a landmark peace deal signed on January 9 last year by Khartoum and the southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), the SPLM was to have withdrawn from the Hamesh Koreb region that it controls within 12 months.
But Mussa said the SPLM was still deployed in the town on Tuesday, 24 hours after the deadline.
An influential policy group warned last week that simmering tensions in east Sudan were a ”powder keg” that could explode into a major war, damaging peace efforts in the western Darfur region and last year’s north-south peace deal.
The International Crisis Group called on the SPLM, which is now part of a power-sharing government in Khartoum, to urge Sudan’s leadership to negotiate in good faith with the Eastern Front.
It said war in the east is a near certainty unless the SPLM, which is allied with the Eastern Front, delays its scheduled withdrawal this month from Sudan’s eastern Red Sea state. — Sapa-AFP