KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) — Sudan severed relations with Chad yesterday, accusing it of supporting the fighters who assaulted the capital the night before, and warned that a top Darfur rebel leader was hiding somewhere in the city.
A curfew was lifted in Khartoum but remained in effect in the capital’s twin city of Omdurman, where rebels were still running loose, state-run radio reported, quoting police Maj. Gen. Mohamed Abdul-Majeed. The country’s official news agency said more than 300 rebels were arrested yesterday across Omdurman.
The surprise assault late Saturday was the closest that Darfur rebels have ever come to Sudan’s seat of government, hundreds of miles from their bases in the far west of the country.
The government issued several statements saying it crushed the rebels and paraded images of captured and bloodied fighters on television.
“I would like to assure people that everything is now under control. The rebel forces have been totally destroyed,” said Sudanese President Omar Bashir in a televised address yesterday.
“These forces come from Chad who trained them. … We hold the Chadian regime fully responsible for what happened,” he said. “We have no choice but to sever relations.”
Mr. Bashir said he reserved the right to retaliate against the “outlaw regime,” raising the specter of a border war between the two countries who have long traded accusations over support for each others’ rebels.
State television for the first time broadcast the picture of Khalil Ibrahim, leader of Darfur’s Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which carried out the assault, saying he was hiding somewhere in Omdurman. The government later announced a reward for information leading to his capture.
JEM has become one of the most effective rebel movements in Darfur, where ethnic Africans took up arms against the ethnic Arab government in 2003 to protest discrimination.
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