West Sudan rebels said on Monday 40 civilians were killed and 60 injured when a government plane bombed villages in raids in the poor and arid Darfur region. A local government official had no specific information about the bombings in Western Darfur state, about 1,100 kilometres southwest of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, but said government forces were operating in that area in response to rebel actions. Rebels regularly report attacks by government forces or its militias, but independent verification is difficult to obtain in the remote west, where the United Nations says at least 500,000 people have been displaced by fighting this year.
| Y'see, if they can't get independent verification, then it never happened. Those people aren't really dead, the women weren't really raped, the little kiddies weren't really orphaned, those that didn't really have their heads beaten in with rocks, anyway... |
Khalil Ibrahim, chairman of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, told Reuters from Paris
| ... where it's pretty safe, unless you're a Jew... |
the latest attacks targeted villages northeast of the town of Geneina on Sunday and were part of a government offensive heading north to areas controlled by rebel groups. The group said last week that rebels and villagers had killed 186 government-armed militia in an area southwest of Geneina. The Justice and Equality Movement is one of two main rebel groups in the region. The other group, the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), agreed a ceasefire with the government in September, although both sides have accused the other of violations.
| It's a cultural thing, very common where people are routinely named Ibrahim... |
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