Rebels 'Defeat, Capture' Sudan Troops in Darfur

Sudanese rebels seized control of an area in war-ravaged eastern Darfur after deadly clashes with government militias, their spokesman said on Saturday, adding that the army continued to bombard the area.

"Justice and Equality Movement forces seized the Um Ajajah region in eastern Darfur on Friday, destroying a mobile contingent of government militias and capturing 20 small vehicles and large trucks loaded with military equipment," JEM spokesman Gibril Adam Bilal said.

"There were casualties on the side of the government troops and we also took a number of them as war prisoners," he told AFP in English by phone, without specifying how many troops were killed or captured.

"We expect more fighting today. The Sudanese air force is still bombarding the Um Ajajah area," he added.

But army spokesman Sawarmi Khaled Saad denied that Sudanese troops were in the area, claiming instead that JEM forces were seizing civilian property in the region.

"The rebels attacked civilians in this area and looted their properties. They also looted the property of a company building roads there," he said.

The hybrid U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur (UNAMID) was unable to confirm or deny the differing accounts of clashes in the area.

Last week, the army spokesman said Sudanese government forces killed 45 JEM rebels who were looting in eastern Darfur, but on that occasion the insurgents dismissed the claim, saying they had seized an army compound east of El-Fasher.

Asked about the accusations of rebels looting, the JEM's Bilal said on Saturday that they were merely "government lies."

"We are only attacking Sudanese troops and militias, whether in North or South Kordofan or eastern Darfur."

The UN estimates that at least 300,000 people have died as a result of the Darfur conflict, which began in 2003 when the JEM and other rebels from non-Arab tribes in Sudan's western region rose up against the Khartoum regime.

In response, the government unleashed state-backed Janjaweed militiamen in a conflict that shocked the world and led to allegations of genocide. Since then, much of the violence in the vast region has degenerated into banditry.

The Sudanese government puts the death toll in the Darfur conflict at 10,000.

Almost two million people are still displaced.

The main Darfur rebel groups, including the JEM, teamed up with insurgents in Sudan's restive southern states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile last year to form a "Revolutionary Front" aimed at toppling the regime in Khartoum.