KHARTOUM, 27 February 2003 — A newly formed armed rebel group has seized a provincial capital in the western Darfur region of Sudan, an area outside the remit of peace talks aimed at end a 20-year civil war between north and south, Khartoum newspapers said yesterday. Around 300 rebels identifying themselves as the Front for the Liberation of Darfur (FLD) seized the town of Gulu, capital of Jebel Marrah province, and installed their own administration, the papers quoted senior local government officials as saying.
The rebel appointee, identified as Abdullah Korah, appealed to the people of the ethnically mixed Darfur region to join the new rebel movement, North Darfur State Governor Ibrahim Suleiman was quoted as saying by the papers, which included the independent Al-Ayam daily. Suleiman, who heads a security committee covering all three states in Darfur, told a conference held in the region’s main town of Fashir on Monday and Tuesday that the rebels had set up training camps in Jebel Marrah.
Meanwhile, more than 100,000 Sudanese of both sexes took to the streets of the Sudanese capital yesterday to condemn a planned US-led strike on Iraq. Government and opposition parties, trade unions, professional associations, students, women’s and youth organizations took part in the demonstration which was called by the Popular Organization for Solidarity with Iraq.
Gathering at Martyrs Square in front of the Republican Palace and flooding into the streets leading to the square, the protesters carried placards and chanted slogans against the United States.
Chief organizer Fathi Khalil, head of the Sudanese Bar Association, who addressed the gathering before handing in a message of protest to the UN, said more than half a million people had turned out, making it the biggest rally here in a decade.
