Chadian army accused by rebels of incursion into Darfur
March 15, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – Two Darfur rebel groups on Thursday accused the Chadian army of making an incursion into Sudan’s western region. Chadian soldiers hold their weapons at the airport of the recently recaptured town of Gao January 28, 2013. (REUTERS/Adama Diarra) A joint statement signed by Gibril Adam Bilal from the Justice and Equality movement (JEM) and Abdulla Mursal from Sudan Liberation Movement of Minni Minnawi (SLM-MM) said that that a Chadian military contingent comprised of 200 armed vehicles and a number of tanks penetrated 150 kilometers inside Darfur. The statement noted that this intervention coincides with an extremely complex security and humanitarian conditions in Darfur, recalling the Chadian military intervention at the beginning of the fighting in the region and the huge support it rendered to the regime in Khartoum. This support, says the statement, has prolonged the war and caused the killing and displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Both groups demanded Chadian troops to immediately withdraw from Sudanese territory, stressing that the people of Darfur are now more aware of the destructive Chadian role in Darfur than before. Sudan and Chad established a joint force in January 2010 to monitor their borders within the framework of a normalization process after long years of proxy war in Darfur and eastern Chad. Chad in the past was seen as the main supporter of Darfur’s JEM but relations between the two sides deteriorated since the reconciliation between Khartoum and Ndjamena in 2010. Last month JEM claimed that it clashed with the Chadian army in the remote area of Um Dukhun in South Darfur which is at 70 kilometers from the common border. This was in response to an attack by these forces on a JEM camp in the same area. The rebel group said it epelled the attack, killing dozen of the Chadian soldiers and destroyed many of its vehicles. There was no response from Chad to these allegations. (ST) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
