Word: tawila
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...Long on blame and short on restraint, Darfur's combatants show little desire to work things out. Despite the rebels' concerted wave of attacks in recent weeks on Tawila and other towns across Darfur - for which they have been solely blamed by UN special envoy Jan Pronk - the rebels insist it is the government that continues to violate the cease-fire...
...official response may have been nothing more than laziness or temerity, but Tawila's African merchants read it as a sinister alliance between the authorities and the raiders. They decided to take matters into their own hands: When the Arabs returned the following Tuesday, again taking items and refusing to pay, the merchants and townspeople attacked them with sticks and stones and camel whips. When the melee was over, four of the raiders - including one woman - lay dead...
...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...
...When the ripple effects of the Tawila market clashes had settled, more than 100 Sudanese lay dead or wounded. The United Nations and international aid organizations had suspended humanitarian operations, withdrawing all personnel and leaving thousands without medicine, food or protection. And the gulf between the warring sides seemed wider than ever, with most Darfuris trapped between them...
...vehicles or relying on air support in the form of bombers or helicopter gunships. "We were at morning prayers when the bombing began," says Kaltum Ali Ahmed, 47, whose village was attacked last March and who along with her daughter and granddaughter sought refuge in the larger town of Tawila. "Then the Janjaweed arrived and tore off our clothes and our jewelry. Anyone who refused was punished or killed. They took some girls and only let them go after three days. I do not want to say what they did to them. It is shameful...