ICC prosecutor seeks arrest of Darfur rebels

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The International Criminal Court prosecutor requested arrest warrants on Thursday for Darfur rebels for the first time, accusing them of storming an African Union camp and killing 12 peacekeepers.

Despite a ceasefire declared in Darfur by Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir last week, the army said its forces had killed 30 rebels while repelling an assault in North Darfur.

Chief prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who also wants to put Bashir on trial over Darfur, said rebel attacks on peacekeepers last year were considered war crimes under the court's statute and vowed that they would not go unpunished.

"Attacking peacekeepers is a very serious crime," Moreno-Ocampo said. "This means civilians have no protection."

Moreno-Ocampo has made the request to the judges of the court, based at The Hague.

The Haskanita attack in September 2007, in which 8 peacekeepers were also wounded, was the bloodiest assault on peacekeepers since the Darfur conflict began in 2003.

The rebel commanders, whose names were not made public, attacked the peacekeeping camp without warning and overwhelmed the base, AU officials said. Ten peacekeepers were killed on the spot. Two died of their wounds.

The peacekeepers, now a joint AU-U.N. force, have been unable to end fighting that international experts say has killed 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million. There is no sign of a deal between Khartoum and the largely non-Arab Darfur rebels.

Sudan's army spokesman Brigadier Uthman al-Agbash accused rebels of launching an attack on Thursday to embarrass the government after Bashir's truce last week.

BOMBING

Leaders of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army confirmed attacking an army base near the settlement of Hilif and said the government called in an air attack on nearby villages in response. Rebel commander Suleiman Marajan told Reuters by satellite phone five of his fighters were killed.

"During the fighting, government Antonovs and attack helicopters came and bombed the area. They burned Hilif completely... Now the whole village is destroyed," said Marajan, from the SLA faction led by Abdel Wahed Mohamed Ahmed al-Nur.

The army made no mention of such bombing, but a journalist with the rebels said a plane had carried out an attack.

The International Criminal Court, established in 2002 as the world's first permanent war crimes court, is considering the case for indicting Bashir and has already indicted a Sudanese minister and an allied militia leader for war crimes.

Preliminary results of an AU investigation into the attacks on peacekeepers said the assailants used vehicles marked "JEM" -- for the Justice and Equality Movement. AU officials suspected a JEM faction or the Sudan Liberation Army's Unity faction.

"What makes these charges significant and important is the gravity of the crime of killing peacekeepers," said Richard Dicker, of the international justice program and Human Rights Watch, after the prosecutor said he would pursue the rebels.

Leaders of several rebel groups denied involvement in the attacks and offered to go to The Hague if named.

"I will go, no problem. We cannot refuse. I know I was not involved," said Bahar Idriss Abu Garda, who led a breakaway faction of JEM at the time and now heads an umbrella group of insurgents known as the United Resistance Front.

Sudan said the prosecutor's move against the rebels had not changed its attitude to the court. It has signed but not ratified the treaty establishing the court and has refused to hand over those indicted so far.

"We are against the handing over of any Sudanese people to outside courts, even if those people are Darfuri rebels," said foreign ministry spokesman Ali al-Sadig.

Moreno-Ocampo said he was confident the requests for warrants against rebels would be handed down. The peacekeepers killed were from Nigeria, Senegal, Botswana and Mali.

(Additional reporting from Andrew Heavens in Khartoum)