Word: rebels
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...looked as if a delicate cease-fire might mark a turning point in Sudan's bloodletting. But the calm broke on Nov. 23--a long day full of just the kind of killing, hypocrisy and indifference that have defined the conflict since it began in February 2003. First, rebel fighters attacked police stations in Tawila. In response, a government plane bombed the town, forcing dozens of aid workers to flee. To date, most of the violence, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left more than 2 million homeless, has been carried out by members of the Janjaweed...
...Colin Powell have said. It is "a tribal conflict," said al-Bashir, who came to power in a 1989 coup. The Janjaweed are merely "outlaws or gangsters who are used to being on horseback and holding arms or guns. They are bandits," he said. "It was started by this rebel group that tried to avenge losses against another tribe. And naturally, when one tribe attacks another tribe, there will be losses...
...late summer's rays of hope have since been clouded, by a series of setbacks that appear to have reversed progress on every front. The most recent apparent breakthrough had come on November 10, when the government pledged to end its aerial bombardment of suspected rebel redoubts, the rebels promised to disclose their troop locations and both sides renewed their assurances of unfettered access to aid workers. Just two weeks later, in this dusty trading town precariously situated between government, rebel and janjaweed strongholds, those tentative steps toward d?tente collapsed, plunging Darfur into a new round of violence...
...cycle of violence continued. Just after morning prayers on Monday, Nov. 22, antigovernment rebel gunmen from the Sudan Liberation Army descended on Tawila in battered pick-ups, heading straight for the police station. After a gun battle that lasted almost an hour, some two dozen police officers had been killed. Then came the government response - old, white Antonov airplanes, circling the town under the noon sun and dropping crude bombs. Six civilians were killed, and three African Union helicopters were called in to evacuate 45 aid workers from a nearby displaced persons' camp. Two days later, the government followed...
...Even though the Sudanese Army reclaimed Tawila the day after the rebel attacks, the remaining civilians don't feel any safer. Far from protecting them, the townspeople say they are again the soldiers' prey. "They have treated the people in a bad way," says one man. "They beat us, they harass us, they take our things." And sometimes they rape...