Mostly African insurgents in Darfur took up arms against the Arab-dominated government in 2003, accusing authorities of neglecting the remote territory.
Khartoum mobilized troops and allied Arab tribes to quell the rebellion, unleashing a wave of violence that the United Nations and other observers estimate may have killed hundreds of thousands of people.
International efforts to broker an end to the conflict have failed to produce lasting peace, hampered by rebel divisions, continuing military operations and other difficulties.
One of the region’s main rebel groups, a faction of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) led by Minni Minnawi , attacked Alawna, an area south of the North Darfur state capital El-Fasher, on Wednesday evening , SLA spokesman Adam Salih said.
The insurgents killed 12 government soldiers including a regional commander and captured weapons such as mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and Kalashnikov rifles, he said.
“The (government) force was completely defeated, and its remnants were scattered toward El-Fasher,” Salih said.
Sudan’s state media reported that fighting had broken out in Alawna on Wednesday, but said the rebels had killed six civilians and wounded four others.
State news agency SUNA quoted a military official from the region as accusing the rebels of burning homes and “terrorizing innocent, unarmed civilians.” The report did not mention any government casualties.
The rebels denied targeting civilians in the attack.
Violence in Darfur, where the United Nations and the African Union maintain a huge joint peacekeeping operation, has subsided since its peak in 2003 and 2004, but rebel and tribal fighting and banditry has continued to plague the territory.
Some 300,000 people may have died in the conflict, the United Nations has estimated. The International Criminal Court has indicted Sudan’s President Omar Bashir and other officials for war crimes in the region.
Khartoum has put the death toll at 10,000 and dismissed the charges as politically motivated and baseless.
Last year, Khartoum signed a peace deal with an umbrella of smaller rebel groups, but Minnawi’s faction of the SLA and the other major insurgent groups refused to sign.
Minnawi’s SLA signed a peace accord with Khartoum in 2006, but later returned to fighting.
