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/ 12 February 2008
A major assault by the Sudanese army and allied militia has left two Darfur towns badly damaged by fire, sources close to a United Nations reconnaissance mission to the region said on Tuesday. The news came as the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed one of its staff members had been killed in the offensive.
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/ 9 February 2008
A senior United Nations official on Friday warned that a reported proxy war between Sudan and Chad through rebel groups on each side of their border threatened to destabilise the region and could lead to a wider conflict. Jean-Marie Guehenno made the remarks to the Security Council as Sudan troops attacked communities in western Darfur.
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/ 5 February 2008
Rebels from Sudan’s Darfur region said on Tuesday that their fighters were engaged in Chad, but they were fighting Sudanese army forces that were backing rebels trying to oust Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno. The Chad army earlier said it repulsed an attack by Sudanese forces and rebels on a frontier town on the Chad-Sudan border on Sunday.
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/ 19 January 2008
The United Nations envoy to Sudan, Jan Eliasson, said on Friday that fresh fighting in the war-torn region of Darfur has set back hopes for a speedy resumption of peace talks. ”The current atmosphere is not the best,” Eliasson told reporters in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, where he met Sudan’s First Vice-President, Salva Kiir.
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/ 16 January 2008
Fresh violence in the Sudanese state of West Darfur has restricted humanitarian work around El Geneina, with aid workers describing the region as a "no-go area". According to aid workers, who did not want to be named, two villages in Geneina were bombed on January 12 and 13 by Sudanese government Antonov planes.
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/ 25 December 2007
Diplomatic wrangling dashed hopes for an end to the killing and rape in Darfur this year and a new United Nations-backed peacekeeping mission scheduled to start on January 1 faces an uphill struggle. The combined effects of war and famine have killed at least 200 000 people with more than two million displaced.
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/ 12 November 2007
Sudan on Monday blamed countries that allow Darfur rebels to operate in their territory for failing to use their influence to persuade the insurgents to attend peace talks last month. Neighbouring Chad allows Darfur rebels to remain armed on its territory, though the groups have representatives in several countries.
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/ 30 October 2007
Darfur rebels boycotting peace talks in Libya said on Tuesday they would meet envoys from an African Union-United Nations mediation team but specified conditions that gave little hope they would change their positions. Mediators had hoped to unite the rival rebel factions before peace talks opened in Libya on October 27.
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/ 29 October 2007
United Nations and African Union officials are to travel to Darfur this week to try to convince key rebel leaders to join peace talks aimed at resolving the crisis in the Sudanese region, the AU said on Monday. Noureddine Mezni, spokesperson for the AU, said the officials would travel to Darfur ”in the next few days”.
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/ 29 October 2007
Darfur rebels accused Sudanese government forces of attacking an area along the border with Chad in violation of a unilateral ceasefire the government declared at the opening of peace talks in Libya. Rebels from two factions, which did not attend the talks, said on Monday the government had attacked the Jabel Moun area along the Chad-Sudan border on Saturday.
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/ 28 October 2007
Negotiators working to end four years of violence in the western Sudanese region of Darfur ploughed on on Sunday despite predictions of failure by host Libyan leader Moammar Gadaffi. Although the Sudanese government declared a unilateral ceasefire at the start of the meeting on Saturday, key rebel groups have boycotted the talks in the city of Sirte
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/ 28 October 2007
Sudan’s government declared an immediate unilateral ceasefire at the opening of Darfur peace talks on Saturday, but the absence of key rebels cast doubt on whether the move could produce meaningful progress. One rebel leader who did attend the gathering in the Libyan town of Sirte voiced reservations about Khartoum’s move.
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/ 27 October 2007
Delegations gathered in Libya on Saturday to launch talks to end four-and-a-half years of conflict in Sudan’s Darfur region but the absence of key rebels cast doubt on whether negotiations could produce any meaningful deal. On the eve of the African Union-United Nations-mediated talks in Sirte, two main rebel groups said they would not attend.
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/ 27 October 2007
Darfur peace mediators said they will press on with negotiations due to start Saturday in Libya despite the decision by two main rebel groups to boycott the talks, saying time was running out for the war-torn Sudanese region. Officials from the United Nations and the African Union plan to open the negotiations with a call for an immediate ceasefire.
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/ 26 October 2007
Darfur’s two main rebel groups will not attend United Nations-African Union mediated peace talks in Libya, their leaders said on Friday, dashing any chance of a peace deal to end four-and-a-half years of conflict. ”We decided not to go,” said Justice and Equality Movement chief negotiator Ahmed Tugod Lissan.
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/ 26 October 2007
The African Union on Friday urged all Sudanese parties involved in the Darfur conflict to take part in peace talks due to kick off in the Libyan city of Sirte. In a statement issued by the pan-African body’s headquarters in Addis Ababa, AU Commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare appealed to ”all the Sudanese parties to constructively participate”.
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/ 25 October 2007
A Darfur rebel group has attacked a Sudanese oilfield and kidnapped a Canadian and an Iraqi worker, a leader of the group said on Thursday, vowing further attacks. ”We attacked Defra oilfield and kidnapped two foreign workers, one is Canadian and another is Iraqi,” said Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr, field commander for the Justice and Equality Movement.
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/ 24 October 2007
The Islamist Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) announced on Wednesday that it would boycott Darfur peace talks due to open in Libya on the weekend, bringing to seven the number of rebel groups intending to stay away. The JEM said it had taken its decision in the light of consultations with six other rebel groups.
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/ 15 October 2007
Representatives of seven Darfur rebel groups met in south Sudan on Monday to try to reach a common negotiating position ahead of peace talks with the government. But huge doubts remain about whether Darfur’s rapidly fracturing rebel groups will be able to agree on a joint set of grievances before they travel to Libya for the negotiations with Khartoum on October 27.
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/ 11 October 2007
Darfur peace talks, aimed at stopping chaotic violence plaguing Sudan’s west, will be a ”moment of truth”, United Nations envoy Jan Eliasson said on Thursday. He urged all of the more than a dozen fractured Darfur rebel factions to attend the talks due to start in Libya on October 27 and said an urgent ceasefire would be the priority.
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/ 10 October 2007
Sudan’s army has denied attacking the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a peace deal with Khartoum, saying tribal clashes were to blame for the fighting that killed 45 people in Muhajiriya town. The Sudan Liberation Army, led by Minni Arcua Minnawi, was the only one of three negotiating rebel factions to sign the May 2006 deal and become part of government.
Sudanese government troops and allied militia on Monday attacked a town belonging to the only Darfur rebel faction to sign a 2006 peace deal, rebels said. ”Government planes have attacked Muhajiriya, which belongs to us, and government forces and Janjaweed militia are fighting our forces” said Khalid Abakar, a senior representative from the Sudan Liberation Army.
A key Darfur rebel leader warned on Saturday his movement will not attend peace talks this month in Libya unless the United Nations and the African Union can convince a rival group to unite its splinter factions.Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement, had said he would attend talks set to begin October 27 in Tripoli, Libya.
Sudanese government forces and militia groups razed a town in central Darfur where African Union soldiers were attacked, rebel leaders said on Friday, adding the troops were also threatening to raid a nearby town. Sudan’s army and Darfur rebel movements blame each other for last week’s assault on the AU base in Haskanita in which 10 African Union soldiers were killed.
Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Monday he would pull his country’s troops out of Darfur if it was determined that African peacekeepers who were killed at the weekend were not equipped to defend themselves. Twenty African Union soldiers were killed or injured and 40 missing after an assault on the Haskanita base in Darfur on Saturday night.
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/ 30 September 2007
Ten African Union (AU) soldiers were killed and 50 were missing after armed men launched an assault on an AU base in Darfur, the worst attack on AU troops since they deployed in Sudan’s violent west in 2004. The AU called it a ”deliberate and sustained” assault by about 30 vehicles, which overran and looted the peacekeepers’ camp on Saturday night.
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/ 25 September 2007
Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Tuesday he will carry on fighting during upcoming peace talks until a final settlement is reached to end the conflict in western Sudan. Ibrahim also said he is dismissing his deputy, accusing him of secret meetings with the government to undermine the movement.
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/ 20 September 2007
A rebel leader from Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region said his fighters defeated a government battalion on Wednesday in a three-hour battle that killed 45 people. Sudan Liberation Army faction chairperson Ahmed Abdel Shafie said one of his units attacked government soldiers stationed in the village of Dobow in the central Jabel Marra region.
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/ 12 September 2007
A senior Darfur rebel leader accused the Sudanese government on Wednesday of trying to grab land ahead of October peace talks, and threatened to pull out of the talks unless attacks stopped. Justice and Equality Movement leader Khalil Ibrahim said the violence in the remote west would make it impossible for him to travel to negotiations with Khartoum.
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/ 11 September 2007
Ongoing violence in Sudan’s Darfur region threatens to undermine planned peace talks between Khartoum and rebel groups, a British minister said as he flew into the war-torn area on Tuesday. British Foreign Office Minister for Africa Mark Malloch Brown made the remarks a day after rebels said government aircraft had bombed a rebel-held Darfur town.
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/ 10 September 2007
Sudanese government aircraft bombed a rebel-held town in Darfur on Monday, insurgent groups said, hours after the government said it was investigating a rebel raid on one of its bases last month. Reports of the attack came seven weeks before rebel groups and the Khartoum government are set to meet for peace talks.
The leaders of France and Britain on Friday revived the spectre of sanctions against Khartoum if progress is not made on a Darfur ceasefire and upcoming political talks. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy said in a joint editorial in the Times in London that sanctions could be used to bring peace to Darfur.