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Rebels say more than 200 civilians dead in Darfur fighting

02 March 2010 04:08 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. Darfur rebels said on Monday that more than 200 civilians had been killed in clashes with Sudanese government troops over the past week in the war-torn western region’s central Jebel Marra plateau, APA reports quoting AFP.
The Sudanese army rejected the death toll and UN officials said they could not confirm civilian casualties as their personnel were unable to access the battle zone.
"We have counted at least 237 civilians dead during fighting over the past week," said Ibrahim al-Hillu, a senior commander of the Sudan Liberation Army faction of Abdelwahid Nour, one of the main rebel factions still holding out against a peace deal with the government.
"Clashes have been continuing today (Monday)," Hillu told AFP.
"(Sudanese government) Antonov aircraft have been bombing the area night and day."
A spokesman for the Sudanese army said the death toll cited by the rebels was "wrong" and denied that troops were engaged in sustained fighting with Nour’s SLA faction.
"SLA-Abdelwahid has no organised base in Jebel Marra. There are just a few fighters who attempt ambushes or hijack vehicles... so sometimes there are a few engagements between these men and the armed forces," the spokesman told AFP.
A spokesman for the UN relief effort in Darfur was unable to confirm or deny the rebel reports of heavy civilian casualties.
"It is impossible to estimate the number of dead because we don’t have access to this area," said Sam Hendricks, spokesman in Khartoum for the UN Organisation for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance.
The joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force said that it too was unable to confirm casualties as it could not access the battle zone.
"If we gave figures, that would imply we were on the ground but in fact we have been unable to send out patrols," the force’s commander Patrick Nyamvumba told AFP.
French aid agency Medecins du Monde said the recent fighting in the eastern part of Jebel Marra had forced 100,000 civilians to flee their homes.
It said clashes around the town of Deribat had forced it to suspend its operations in the area.
An aid agency official speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity suggested that the death toll given by the rebels was exaggerated as most civilians had already fled.
"I doubt there could have been so many deaths as the civilian population fled before the fighting started in Deribat," the official said.
The flare-up in fighting between Nur’s SLA faction and government forces came after another key rebel group, the Justice and Equality Movement, signed a peace deal with Khartoum last month.
The JEM, the most heavily armed Darfur rebel group, which launched an unprecedented assault on the Sudanese capital Khartoum in 2008, has carried out a series of prisoner exchanges with the government since the deal and seen more than 100 of its fighters on death row amnestied.
But Nur blasted the deal as a cynical pitch for a share of power in Khartoum.
"What peace is it? A ceremonial peace... a struggle to get government posts? he asked in an AFP interview.