KHARTOUM, 1 September 2003 — A transport aircraft destroyed by Sudan for delivering supplies and ammunition from southern Sudanese rebels to ethnic minority fighters in the western Darfur region came from Kenya, a press report said here yesterday.

The Sudanese Air Force said on Friday it had downed the plane, vowing that any other aircraft supplying the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), which has claimed a string of attacks on government forces this year, would meet a similar fate.

Kenya is the main mediator in talks between the government and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) which hit deadlock earlier this month.

The plane took off from the Kenyan Lokichokio airbase, landed at an airstrip in Malwal Kuol, an area under SPLA control in Sudan’s Bahr El-Ghazal province, before flying to North Darfur, close to the Chadian border, the independent Sudan Media Centre (SMC) said yesterday.

“It was dealt with upon landing and preparing to unload,” on Thursday, the SMC reported, saying that the plane was attacked on the ground before it was unloaded, not shot out of the sky. The plane made 12 previous sorties between the SPLA areas and Darfur, transporting weapons and ammunition, the report said, quoting “informed sources”. It also flew SPLA fighters to train SLM rebels, SLM fighters to SPLA training camps and injured SLM troops for treatment in SPLA hospitals, the report added.

“The government will never hesitate in deterring anyone who jeopardizes the country’s security,” the SMC quoted Information Minister Al-Zahawane Ibrahim Malik as saying.

The report did not specify the type of the aircraft. It said it belonged to a “foreign” charter company owned by a British resident.

The SLM began life as the Darfur Liberation Movement in August 2001 before re-emerging under its current name last February when it began claiming responsibility for a series of anti-government attacks.

It briefly captured North Darfur’s second largest settlement of Kuttum earlier this year. With a truce between Khartoum and the SPLA largely holding while peace talks battle on in Kenya, the war in Darfur is now Sudan’s main battlefront.

The SPLA launched a rebellion in 1983 in the predominantly Christian and animist regions of the south against the Arab and Muslim dominated government in Khartoum.