Peacekeepers say Darfur rebels fail to capture base

Mon May 25, 2009 7:42am EDT

KHARTOUM May 25 (Reuters) - International peacekeepers said on Monday Darfur rebel fighters had failed to capture a Sudanese army base in Darfur, contradicting earlier reports of an insurgent victory.

The joint U.N./African Union UNAMID peacekeeping force on Saturday said raiders had overrun the base in the settlement of Umm Baru, close to the Chadian border in north Darfur.

But UNAMID Information Director Kamal Seiki said on Monday the reports from peacekeepers there had been confused.

"We had information that the attackers had taken the base, but apparently that was not the case," Seiki said. "They did make a push for it, but they did not overrun the post. Put it down to the fog of war." The rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) on Monday said they had attacked the base in Umm Baru and gave varying accounts of the fighting. Senior commander Suleiman Sandal insisted the JEM were still largely in control of the town but had sent out units to confront an expected counterattack from the south.

JEM humanitarian chief Suleiman Jamous told Reuters the rebel forces had pulled out of the town after government planes started bombing the area.

"We wanted to save the people of Umm Baru from the bombing. We pulled out after we achieved what we set out to achieve, which was to attack the base and limit the soldiers' ability to harass civilians," Jamous said.

Tensions have been building along Sudan's remote border with Chad for weeks. The two oil producers have long accused one another of supporting each other's rebels.

Darfur's six-year conflict flared when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against Sudan's government, accusing it of neglecting the development of the region.

Estimates of the resulting death toll range from 10,000 according to Khartoum, to 300,000 according to the U.N.'s Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes.



KHARTOUM BOMB

A bomb was left outside a Khartoum office of the Sudanese People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) on Monday but failed to explode, the former rebel group said.

The SPLM, which fought for two decades in southern Sudan against Khartoum's rule but is now a junior partner in the government, said the bomb was at an office where senior SPLM official Yasir Arman is based.

A pro-government paper recently called for the killing of Arman over comments he had made objecting to the application of Islamic sharia law to non-Muslims. The paper was briefly suspended from publication.

"The guard saw something flashing on the object and suddenly there was a loud explosion. Fortunately, it seems that only the detonator exploded, and no souls were lost ... This was a definite attempt to kill people and destroy the building," SPLM spokesman Yien Matthew Chol said.

Chol said two men had been seen climbing over the fence and leaving an object, running away when dogs started barking and a guard came to investigate. Police said there was evidence the bomb was remote-controlled, according to Chol.

"One possibility is that they meant to detonate it later in the day when the SPLM staff came in to work," he said.

He said more than 60 people usually worked in the building, and the SPLM had been planning to host a meeting with opposition political parties on Monday.

The north-south conflict, which is separate from the fighting in Darfur, ended in a 2005 peace deal which set up a north-south coalition government. But tensions have led to continuing clashes between northern and southern forces.

National elections due in early 2010 and a referendum on southern independence in 2011 are crucial to the success of the fragile north-south peace deal. (Reporting by Andrew Heavens; writing by Aziz El-Kaissouni and Alastair Sharp; editing by Andrew Roche)

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