CAIRO, 3 December 2003 — Sudanese government warplanes killed 47 civilians and wounded 37 others during bombing raids on villages in western Sudan’s Darfur region, a rebel leader, Abdel Wahed Muhammad Ahmed Al-Nur, said yesterday.
“Antonov planes with the Sudanese armed forces savagely bombed villages in the Jibal Nun region on Monday, leaving 47 dead, mostly women and children, and 37 wounded,” Al-Nur said.
Al-Nur, president of the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement, said the airstrikes in the region north of El-Geneina, the main city in West Darfur State, sparked a mass exodus of villagers to surrounding mountains and villages.
A local government official had no specific information about the bombings in Western Darfur state, about 1,100 km southwest of Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, but said government forces were operating in that area in response to rebel actions.
The SLM last week accused Sudanese government forces of having launched airstrikes against two areas of Darfur, killing 14 people. Government forces have clashed since February with the SLM, which accuses Khartoum of neglecting the impoverished North, West and South Darfur states in the region neighboring Chad.
The government and the SLM are due to restart negotiations to reach a comprehensive settlement in Chad on Dec. 4. At least 3,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by the fighting, with the conflict choking economic development in the region.
Khalil Ibrahim, chairman of the rebel Justice and Equality Movement, told Reuters from Paris the latest attacks targeted villages northeast of Geneina on Sunday and was part of a government offensive heading north to areas controlled by rebel groups.
