Attacks in West Darfur have killed at least 63 people, half of them children, as rebels on Friday accused Khartoum of remobilising Arab militia after suffering two military defeats on the Sudan-Chad border. “The government have begun mobilising the Janjaweed widely, especially in West Darfur, because they want to clear the area and move north along the border and defeat us,” said Bahr Idriss Abu Garda, a leader of the National Redemption Front (NRF). | A struggling African Union force, monitoring a widely ignored peace deal, said up to 92 people might have been killed in the attack on October 29 on at least four villages in the Jabel Moun area. |
Sudanese officials deny the reports saying they have not mobilised Arab militia and the army denies using its Antonov planes, which would be a violation of a UN Security Council resolution. Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Friday indicated the toll in Darfur had been exaggerated saying only 10,000 people had died in western Sudan. At a news conference in Beijing where he was attending a summit of African leaders, he reiterated that he would not allow UN forces into Darfur, despite a UN resolution authorising 22,000 UN troops to replace AU peacekeepers. “We decided that with such an army moving into our country, the impact is going to be the same as what’s been happening in Iraq,” Bashir said.