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Posted on 01/06/2004 1:06:55 PM PST by miltonim
Pro-democracy rebels in western Sudan yesterday accused government forces of massacring civilians in a village in the remote Darfur region where they also claimed to have captured a town, killing 200 soldiers.
The Sudan Liberation Movement said government forces on Friday killed 200 civilians, including children and elderly people, in an attack on Sorra village, and called for urgent help for thousands of people uprooted by the fighting.
“I’m calling the international community to investigate this genocide immediately, and the very, very terrible humanitarian situation,” SLM chairman Abdel-Wahid Muhammad Ahmed Al-Nur said.
He said about 4,000 villagers had been forced to flee into the wilderness around another six villages near Sorra for fear of attack, joining hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by fighting in the western Sudan state of Darfur this year.
“People are living as if they are animals in the mountains and valleys. Nobody has sent anything to them,” he told Reuters by telephone from Darfur.
SLM Secretary-General Minni Arcuo Minnawi also told Reuters by satellite telephone the SLM had captured the town of Sherya, 70 km east of Nyala, the capital of southern Darfur. Government dictatorship officials were not immediately available for comment.
SLM forces had killed about 200 soldiers in the two-hour battle for the town, Minnawi said. “The situation is quiet. It’s under our control,” he said. Sixteen rebels had been killed in the fighting, he added.
The Arab-Islamist dictatorship based in Khartoum, northern Sudan, has been able to divert resources to attempt to reimpose control in its largest state Darfur, since peace talks with the largest rebel group in the south of the country look set to end 20 years of fighting in the south.
The Sudan Liberation Movement (CHRISTIAN) said government forces (MUSLIM) on Friday killed 200 civilians (CHRISTIAN), including children and elderly people, in an attack on Sorra village, and called for urgent help for thousands of people uprooted by the fighting.
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