Concern Rises About Reports of New Fighting in Darfur

By Jeffrey Gettleman, from Saturday's "New York Times"...

(See also, most recently, Friday's VOA story.)

The African Union is investigating reports of a new round of intense fighting between Sudanese government troops and rebels in Darfur in which more than 100 soldiers may have been killed, an African Union spokesman said [on] Friday.

Several aid organizations said [that] the fighting was imperiling humanitarian programs in a swath of southern Darfur that has become so lawless and violent — and rebel-controlled — that it is considered a no-go zone even for peacekeepers.

“We’re looking into several reports about the fighting, and we’re very concerned,” said Noureddine Mezni, a spokesman for the African Union, which has 7,000 peacekeepers in Sudan. “What’s most disappointing is that this broke out just days after the Arusha agreement.”

An agreement was signed this week in Arusha, Tanzania, by more than half a dozen of Darfur’s many rebel groups, which pledged to work together to end the bloodshed in Darfur that has claimed more than 200,000 lives and destabilized a large area of central Africa. The Sudanese government welcomed the rebels’ agreement tepidly, saying [that] it supported the idea of a cease-fire, but was disappointed that several insurgent groups had boycotted the peace process.

One of the leading rebel groups to sign the Arusha agreement was the Justice and Equality Movement, which has fought the government on and off with varying degrees of intensity, partly because of violent internal splits.

This week, the movement said [that] it had shot down a Sudanese fighter jet and routed government forces in southern Darfur, claims [that] the government denied. The movement also accused Sudan of bombing villages recently and driving thousands of people from their homes, which the government also said was false.

According to aid workers, the fighting in southern Darfur has been exacerbated by increasing tensions among nomadic tribes, which until recently had sided with the government.

At the same time, United Nations officials have said that attacks on aid convoys and aid workers across Darfur are rising sharply, and that some towns as close as 15 miles apart can now be reached only by helicopter, because the roads are so dangerous.