Sudan cuts ties with Chad after rebel attack
By Opheera McDoom
KHARTOUM, May 11 (Reuters) - Sudan cut diplomatic relations with Chad on Sunday after an attack on the Sudanese capital by Darfur rebels which it said was supported by Chadian President Idriss Deby.
The rebels fought Sudanese troops in a suburb of Khartoum on Saturday in a bid to seize power but officials said the attack was defeated.
Sudanese authorities extended a curfew indefinitely on Sunday and said troops were still hunting down rebels who were wandering the streets. "These forces are all basically Chadian forces supported and prepared by Chad and they moved from Chad under the leadership of Khalil Ibrahim," President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on state television.
Ibrahim is the leader of the Darfur rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) which attacked Khartoum state's suburb Omdurman after a lightning move through the country from the Chadian border.
"We are now cutting our diplomatic relations with this regime," Bashir said in his comments, made after returning from the Muslim pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia.
It was the first time fighting had reached the capital in decades of conflict between the traditionally Arab-dominated central government of Africa's biggest country and rebels from peripheral regions.
During the attack, heavy gunfire and artillery shook Omdurman, situated across the Nile river from the heart of Khartoum.
"We have lots of wandering defeated fighters ... and we are chasing them and we don't want civilians to get caught in the cross fire," Khartoum state governor Abdel Haleem al-Mutafi told Reuters.
State television showed a picture of Ibrahim, branding him a war criminal. It called on citizens to pass on any information about his whereabouts.
PANDEMONIUM
Residents said there was pandemonium on the streets of Omdurman on Sunday morning with cars, thought to be filled with rebels, moving around.
Many of Khartoum's irregular government security forces sometimes look like rebels wearing various types of uniforms and head wraps.
One resident said she could still hear shooting in the far west of Omdurman on Sunday morning.
The undersecretary at Sudan's foreign ministry, Mutrif Siddig, told Reuters that the Chadian embassy in Khartoum had been searched by security forces overnight.
"The contacts that have been monitored revealed that one of the points of contact for the rebel leadership was from within the Chadian embassy here in Khartoum," he said.
"The operation itself has been crushed but there are still some elements at large with some weapons," Siddig added.
A senior army commander told Sudan television that security forces had captured more than 100 rebels many of them just 17-18 years old.
He added they had information that JEM leader Ibrahim was involved in the operation and that his vehicle may have been hit but that he was still at large in the city.
Chad blamed Sudan for an attack on N'Djamena ealier this year which reached Deby's Republican Palace and analysts said the attack on Khartoum may have been retaliation for that. (Editing by Richard Balmforth)
