AU-U.N. Troops Probe Rebel 'Attack' near CAR Border

Peacekeepers in Sudan's Darfur region are investigating a reported rebel attack near the Central African Republic border, a spokeswoman said Thursday, after insurgents said they killed Sudanese troops.

"We've dispatched a patrol" to the remote Umm Dafog area of South Darfur state bordering the CAR, said Susan Manuel of the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur.

"We had reports of Umm Dafog being attacked," she added, but it was unclear which rebel group was involved.

The Sudan Liberation Army (SLA)-Minni Minnawi faction claimed to have carried out the attack on a Sudanese Armed Forces compound on Tuesday.

"In this fighting we used heavy weapons and bombed the area from far away," the group's spokesman Abdullah Moursal told Agence France Presse. "This area is now under the control of the SLA."

Moursal said Sudanese troops suffered "heavy losses" and some were taken prisoner but he gave no figures.

Sudan's army spokesman could not be reached.

Manuel said peacekeepers also had reports of a separate attack by unknown rebels who destroyed a telecommunications tower west of Edd Al Fursan, about 150 kilometers (90 miles) northeast of Umm Dafog.

SLA and other key Darfuri rebels last year joined the Sudanese Revolutionary Front with insurgents from the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile on the border with South Sudan.

The rebels pledged to topple the Khartoum regime, which they regard as unrepresentative of the country's political, ethnic and religious diversity.

But they have denied fighting alongside South Sudanese troops who on April 10 occupied Sudan's main oilfield of Heglig, hundreds of kilometers (miles) east of Umm Dafog in South Kordofan.

The South's military on Thursday reported a widening of the conflict zone along the border, including to the South's Western Bahr El Ghazal state adjacent to South Darfur.

In 2003, SLA and other rebels drawn from Darfur's non-Arab tribes rose up against the Arab-dominated Khartoum government.

Conflict continues, though last year the government signed a peace deal with an alliance of rebel splinter factions. Much of the violence in Darfur has degenerated into banditry.