Sudan rebel vows to wear down foes
His forces from Darfur shocked the government by reaching Khartoum's outskirts undetected.
KHARTOUM, Sudan - Darfur's most-wanted rebel leader vowed yesterday to keep up his offensive against the Sudanese government, saying he can exhaust the military by fighting it all across Africa's largest nation.
Khalil Ibrahim said the military success of the Justice and Equality Movement was easy to explain. "We are more spread out and we move fast," he said in an interview.
The speed of his forces was widely credited with allowing Ibrahim's men to reach the outskirts of Khartoum to launch an attack Saturday without being detected by government troops. They set out from the Darfur and Kordofan regions under cover of night in vehicles similar to those used by the army, racing across the vast arid terrain of central Sudan.
Ibrahim said he was speaking by phone while on the run in the capital's twin city of Omdurman, where his rebels staged the daring raid. It is the closest that Darfur's rebels have ever gotten to the seat of the government.
"I am still in Omdurman. I am not safe, but I am with all my forces," Ibrahim said, disputing government assertions that the attackers were crushed. He said reinforcements were on the way.
The attack shocked the government, which was pursuing a full-scale manhunt for Ibrahim and cracking down on other opposition figures. Islamist opposition politician Hassan al-Turabi, accused of links to JEM, was detained for questioning yesterday but was released without charge.
Experts said Ibrahim's advance to the edge of Khartoum was meant to bring the Darfur war to the heart of the regime's power base and force Sudanese to confront the conflict's festering humanitarian wounds, with at least 200,000 dead and 2.5 million people forced from their homes.