The Sudanese military said on Sunday that troops clashed with thieves in Darfur as the Khartoum regime vowed to flush bandits out of the violence-torn region regardless of a cease-fire.
Rebel commanders accused Sudan of bombing North Darfur after President Omar al-Beshir announced a cease-fire on Wednesday in a series of measures designed to stall legal proceedings against him for alleged war crimes.
But army spokesman Brigadier General Mohamed Osman al-Aghbash was quoted by the Arabic version of the online Sudan Media Centre-considered close to the intelligence services-as saying the army clashed with "thieves."
"A convoy of humanitarian trucks was hijacked by thieves in the Kurbia area. The army intervened and started clashing with the thieves. The hijackers ran away and the army lost no troops," he was quoted as saying. The military denied the air strikes that rebels said struck the Kurbia area on Friday and insisted that all subsequent operations would be self-defence only.
Mohammed Mandour el-Mahadi, a senior member of Beshir's ruling National Congress Party, on Sunday drew a distinction between rebel movements, with whom Sudan declared the unilateral cease-fire, and operations against bandits.
"The others-the bandits on the streets-will they be part of that cease-fire? I don't think so. If you have a thief in Darfur, you have to confront the thief in Darfur. So they are not part of that," he told reporters. "We are just speaking about the rebel movements, but the others have to be fought by the government and they have to cleaned out of the streets of Darfur," added Mahadi.
Although two Darfur rebel groups initially rose up against the government in February 2003, the conflict has mushroomed into a hugely complex web of violence fought between myriad groups and marred increasingly by banditry.
Comments
Comments are closed.