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| Africa: Horn |
| Darfur rebels kill 410 Sudanese troops |
| 2004-03-06 |
| Rebels in Sudanâs western Darfur region said they killed around 410 government soldiers and militiamen in two battles on Friday as the Sudanese military tried to open routes between the main cities in the area. The rebels said they killed about 130 troops and militiamen in one battle in Northern Darfur state and about 280 in the second clash, in Southern Darfur state. Khalil Ibrahim, the leader of one of the two main Darfur rebel groups, said the two groups undertook joint operations to engage two troop formations which had assembled to break a rebel blockade of the areaâs towns. âWe knew they were there and that they were going to try and break the blockade so we fought them and defeated them,â said the Justice and Equality Movementâs (JEM) Ibrahim, speaking to Reuters by telephone from France. Salah Idriss, a spokesman for the Sudanese Liberation Army (SLA), the second rebel group in Darfur, gave Reuters details of the two battles by satellite telephone shortly after the fighting had ended. âThree thousand Janjaweed and government soldiers attacked us in an area about 25 kilometres west of al-Fashir in Northern Darfur State... We killed about 130 of them and lost 10 of our own men,â Idriss said. âThere are about 25 of their dead lying on the ground near us now... Some are in military uniforms,â he said, adding that the rebels also had about 3,000 men in the battle. Idriss said Janjaweed fighters withdrawing from the battle raided and burnt villages as they fled and killed 20 civilians. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |