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/ 12 November 2008
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir on Wednesday announced an immediate ceasefire in Darfur.
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/ 27 October 2008
Sudanese security officers burst into a theatre in the cultural capital of war-torn Darfur and arrested three actors when the curtain came down.
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/ 25 October 2008
Arab militia attacks on Sudanese villages near a south Darfur flashpoint displaced up to 12 000 people and killed more than 40 civilians.
A Sudanese anti-terrorist court has convicted and sentenced to death two senior members of a Darfur rebel group and six others.
A plane crashed in Sudan on Monday after taking off from Khartoum, killing four crew members. It is the fourth plane crash in Sudan in two months.
A Sudanese airliner coming from Amman and Damascus burst into flames after landing in Khartoum on Tuesday night, killing at least 33.
A Sudanese airliner burst into flames after landing in Khartoum overnight in bad weather, killing at least 28 of the 217 people on board, officials said on Wednesday.
Burned and looted huts stretch as far as the eye can see in Sudan’s oil-rich town of Abyei, now empty of civilians, the United States special envoy to Sudan, Richard Williamson, said on Saturday. Williamson, who toured Abyei on Friday, said he saw ”scorched earth” devastation in the town where heavy fighting last month sent tens of thousands of civilians fleeing.
Military leaders and officials from north and south Sudan have agreed there would be ”no return to war” after more than a week of bloody clashes over the disputed oil town of Abyei, a senior northern official said on Tuesday. Tens of thousand of civilians fled Abyei last week during clashes between northern and southern troops.
A Darfur rebel group threatened on Monday to launch new attacks on Khartoum and central Sudan, amid fears that the region’s peace process was unravelling. The threat from the Sudan Liberation Movement’s Unity faction came weeks after Darfur insurgents the Justice and Equality Movement raided Sudan’s capital.
The secretary general of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) said on Monday his country was on the brink of a new north-south civil war, and called on northern forces to leave a disputed oil town. ”We’re on the brink of war. Clashes have already happened,” SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum told a news conference.
Sudan said on Thursday a senior member of the Darfur rebel forces that launched an attack on Khartoum killing more than 200 people had been arrested. State media reported the detention of Abdel Aziz Ashr, describing him as the half-brother of Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of the insurgent Justice and Equality Movement.
Twenty-one Sudanese army soldiers have been killed in fierce fighting with southern forces in the contested oil-rich town of Abyei, army sources said on Wednesday. The army accused the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, from semi-autonomous South Sudan, of attacking its positions in the town on Tuesday.
Fighting resumed on Tuesday in Abyei, the flashpoint oil-rich border area between north and south Sudan whose status remains contested three years after the end of civil war, aid workers said. ”It began early this morning and now it seems like the fighting has stopped,” Kouider Zerrouk, the deputy spokesperson for the United Nations mission in Sudan, said.
A leading human rights group accused the international community on Monday of not doing enough to deter Sudan from new attacks in Darfur, where it cited a return to ”scorched-earth” policies. Human Rights Watch said the United Nations Security Council should impose sanctions on Sudanese officials behind attacks on civilians in Darfur in February.
Thousands of people on Wednesday demonstrated in Khartoum at a government-organised ”victory” rally to denounce Darfur rebels who staged a daring attack on the capital as agents of Israel. Waving flags and banners, crowds of men, women and schoolchildren converged outside army headquarters to hear a speech from President Omar al-Bashir.
Sudan on Wednesday urged the international community to list the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) as a terrorist group, after its lightning weekend assault on the capital. The assault was only halted at the bridge leading to central Khartoum, army headquarters and the presidential palace.
An unprecedented Darfur rebel attack on Khartoum is a turning point that could persuade Sudan’s rulers to negotiate seriously with their foes or push Africa’s biggest country towards disintegration. Sudan-watchers believe the key is international involvement and say much more pressure is needed on both rebels and the government.
Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Monday he would launch more attacks on Sudan’s capital Khartoum until the government fell. ”This is just the start of a process and the end is the termination of this regime,” said Ibrahim, whose Justice and Equality Movement attacked Khartoum at the weekend.
Sudan broke off diplomatic relations with Chad on Sunday after an attack by Darfur rebels on the capital, Khartoum, that the government said was supported by Chadian President Idriss Déby Itno. On Saturday, the rebels fought Sudanese troops in a suburb of Khartoum in a bid to seize power, but officials said the attack was defeated.
An overnight curfew has been imposed on Khartoum after Darfur rebels attacked a suburb of Sudan’s capital on Saturday, state television said. Heavy gunfire was heard in the west of Khartoum and helicopters and army vehicles headed towards the area, witnesses said. It is the closest the rebels have come to the centre of Khartoum.
Darfur rebels and Sudan’s army fought heavy battles in the North Kordofan province near Khartoum on Saturday, a local government official and witnesses said. The Darfur Justice and Equality Movement said it was strengthening its forces in Kordofan but not attacking government troops — to avoid causing civilian casualties.
Sudanese government bombs have hit a primary school and a busy market place in Darfur, killing at least 13 people, including seven children, two aid organisations said on Monday. The Sudanese army has repeatedly denied bombing in the area, which would be a violation of a United Nations Security Council resolution banning all offensive flying.
A Sudanese cameraman with the al-Jazeera on Friday accused United States authorities of insulting Islamic symbols on his return home after six years of detention at Guantánamo Bay. There were ”many violations — [we were] deprived from praying and there were … deliberate insults to God’s holy book” said Sami al-Haj.
Sudan will decide in two weeks whether to charge five people suspected of murdering a United States diplomat and his driver on January 1. Abdeen al-Tahir, a senior Interior Ministry official, told the Sudanese Media Centre the case would be referred to the Justice Ministry for trial in about 15 days.
Darfur rebels accused the government on Tuesday of bombing areas under their control and said attacks this week showed Khartoum was not serious about seeking peace. But the army denied the accusations, which come during the visit of a Sudanese delegation to London to follow up on British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s offer to host Darfur peace talks.
About 95 people have been killed in tribal clashes in south Sudan, which have also targeted equipment and facilities used in an historic nationwide census, local press reports said on Friday. Clashes broke out on Tuesday in the southern Lakes State between two rival branches of the Dinka tribe after a dispute over cattle.
Sudan on Tuesday shut down for its first census in 15 years, a milestone in the peace deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war but clouded in dispute threatening to undermine the accord further. The two-week census is crucial to prepare constituencies for national elections.
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday it will cut food rations by half for up to three million people in Darfur starting next month because attacks on its trucks have reduced stocks. The agency said 60 WFP-contracted trucks have been hijacked in the western Sudanese province since the start of the year.
Gunmen have attacked police from the African Union and United Nations peacekeeping force in Darfur for the first time, injuring one officer by beating him with a rifle butt, a UN spokesperson said on Thursday. The unarmed police were stopped at gunpoint as they returned from a routine patrol.
Girls as young as 11 have suffered rape by Sudanese government forces and armed groups across Darfur more than five years after war began there, a rights organisation said on Monday. Human Rights Watch said sexual violence is rife in Darfur, where neither Sudanese security forces nor international peacekeepers are properly protecting women and girls.
Sudanese planes have bombed five areas in the war-torn Darfur region, killing a child and injuring another, Darfur rebels said on Tuesday, although the army denied involvement. Suleiman Jamous, a member of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army Unity faction, said three areas were in the desert where rebels had troops.