KHARTOUM: Deadly clashes broke out yesterday when Sudanese security forces thrust into one of the largest camps for displaced people in Darfur, leaving up to 27 people dead, witnesses and rebels said.
Reports of casualties varied wildly and there was no immediate confirmation of numbers from aid workers or UN officials compiling their own statistics.
One rebel commander in Darfur told AFP that 27 people had been killed. Aid workers said people on the ground in Kalma camp, outside Darfur’s biggest town of Nyala, had reported more than 20 dead.
Government security forces massed at dawn outside Kalma, a highly charged camp home to up to 100,000 people made homeless by five years of war in Sudan's western region of Darfur, witnesses and UN officials said.
“This morning security forces surrounded Kalma camp and demanded that every IDP (internally displaced person) leave,” Ahmed Abdel Shafie, a commander in the nebulous rebel Sudan Liberation Army, told AFP from elsewhere in Darfur. “Later, they opened fire on the eastern side of the camp. There were many casualties. Up to now, we have 27 confirmed dead and 75 wounded.”
He accused the government of wanting to disband IDP camps near main towns to isolate victims of the conflict since the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court has sought an arrest warrant for President Omar Bashir.
Adam Mohamed, a community leader in Kalma, told AFP by telephone that eight IDPs were killed and another 30 were wounded in clashes with police.
