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WESTRN SUDAN UPDATE
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The following is from the BBC News.
Western Sudan rebels 'fight back' Rebels say Darfur is ignored by the government Rebels fighting in western Sudan say they have been on the offensive just days after the president said they had been crushed. One group said it had cut communications between key towns in the Darfur region, while another claimed to have shot down a government helicopter. A year of fighting has led some 800,000 people to flee their homes. Some accuse government forces of practising ethnic cleansing against non-Arabs in the region. 'Helicopter downed' Colonel Omar Adam Issa from the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme that the rebels had taken six towns in Darfur. "We killed nearly 270 government soldiers and recovered weapons and vehicles from the troops, we only lost 24 people and some of our men were injured," he said by telephone, claiming to be in western Darfur. He admitted, however, that the government was in control of Tine, on the border with Chad. JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim, leader of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), told Reuters news agency that about 12,000 rebel troops from his group and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) had cut roads connecting the key towns of al-Fashir, Geneina and Nyala, and the route out of the area to the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. "The government cannot move at all in the region of Darfur," he said from Paris. The government has not commented on the claims and it is difficult to verify reports from the remote region. The SLA's Mani Arkoi Minawi told the Eritrean news agency that his forces had shot down a government helicopter. On Monday, President Omar al-Bashir had said the army was in control of "all theatres of operations". The rebels also ejected a general amnesty declared by Mr Bashir. Goats and camels The government on Thursday released 33 rebels in al-Fashir, reports the official Suna news agency. The UN has started taking families to new camps The fighting in Darfur has escalated as the government and rebels in the south have neared a peace deal. Over the weekend, there was a new surge of thousands of refugees fleeing the fighting in western Sudan for the border with Chad. They were camping out in the open, sheltering behind bushes from the harsh desert wind. Some arrived with herds of goats and camels, many with almost nothing. Many say their villages were first bombed by government planes and then attacked by Arab militias on horseback. The BBC's Andrew Harding on the Chad-Sudan border says there is strong evidence that Sudan's government is behind the Arab militias, using them to crush a local rebellion in Darfur in brutal style. This region is so isolated that the full scale of the conflict is hard to gauge.
How can the government and talk about peace and there is war going on on in Darfur!
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