Sudan cuts ties to Chad as rebels hit Khartoum

Published on Sunday 11 May 2008 21:57

SUDAN severed relations with Chad yesterday, accusing its western neighbour of supporting fighters who assaulted its capital, Khartoum.

The Darfur civil war in western Sudan, in which hundreds of thousands have died in the past five years, escalated when one of the Darfur rebel groups attacked Khartoum for the first time.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir appeared on state television yesterday to announce that Sudan had severed diplomatic relations with Chad.

Mr Hassan claimed the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) guerrillas, one of the two main rebel forces in Darfur, were "all basically Chadian forces supported and prepared by Chad".

Chad has denied involvement, but the JEM rebel assault appears to be a retaliation for a similar assault last February when thousands of Chadian rebels, backed by the Sudanese government, advanced westwards over some 510 miles of territory from Sudan and entered N'Djamena, Chad's capital.

The forces of the United Front for Democracy and Change surrounded the palace of president Idriss Dby in 300 vehicles. The attempted coup failed when French soldiers and aircraft intervened and drove the rebels out of N'Djamena.

The JEM rebels had penetrated Khartoum by Saturday night. But yesterday government spokesmen said the rebels had withdrawn to Omdurman, facing Khartoum on the west bank of the Nile.

Black African rebel armies in the south and west of Sudan, Africa's biggest country, have for decades complained of neglect by the Arab-dominated central government. A peace deal between north and south ended one civil war in 2005 and boosted Sudan's economy by increasing oil production in the south, but that agreement did not cover the conflict which erupted in Darfur, an area the size of France in the west of the country, in 2003.

Experts estimate that between 200,000 and 500,000 have died and 2.5 million have been made homeless in Darfur.

The government's failure to stop the JEM reaching Khartoum is a blow to both Mr al-Bashir's government and the prestige of the Arab-dominated army. For the JEM rebels, it boosts their credibility at a time when Darfur's insurgent movements are increasingly fractured.

Mandour al-Mahdi, political secretary of Sudan's ruling National Congress Party, said: "The main aim of this failed terrorist sabotage attack was to let people imagine that they had the ability to enter Khartoum. Thank God this attempt has been defeated. Some high-level JEM commanders were killed."

An American official in Khartoum said about 3,000 rebel fighters were involved in the attack and some Sudanese soldiers had defected to rebel ranks. The official said there were credible reports that the government had arrested several mid-level military officers, most of them originally from Darfur, and that officials were "scared to death" about the prospect of a coup.

While a rebel takeover of Khartoum is unlikely, Tahir Elfaki, a JEM spokesman, said the attack was designed to bring Darfur's suffering to the heart of the government. "The government has tried to keep us occupied in western Sudan, but we have decided we are going to deploy throughout the country."