Rebels say civilians being bombed in the east

Sudanese rebels who recently clashed with government forces in the east have accused Khartoum of using planes to bomb civilians near the Eritrean border. "Civilians take all the punishment - their houses, their livestock. Today [Friday] they are bombing with aircraft," said Salah Barqueen, a senior official of the Eastern Front, a rebel movement formed in February when the Beja Congress merged with another eastern rebel group, the Rashaida Free Lions. Taisier Ali, secretary-general of the Sudan Alliance Forces, a Sudanese opposition group based in neighbouring Asmara, Eritrea, said they thought the planes were Russian-made Antonov bombers attacking from a high altitude. "Whenever they see a crowd of people, they just release their bombs - which invariably fall on civilians," Ali said. The Sudanese minister of information and communication, Abd-al-Basit Sabdarat, dismissed the rebels’ claims that government planes had bombarded civilians in eastern Sudan. "The government did not use [war] planes, nor did it carry out any air raid on any region in eastern Sudan," he said in a statement on Friday. According to Suna, the official Sudanese news agency, the minister said the government would protect the lives and property of civilians should the rebels do anything to threaten the security or stability of the country. Independent confirmation of the attacks and casualty figures was unavailable on Monday. Officials from both the Eastern Front and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), a rebel group from the western region of Darfur, reported movements of civilians away from the area, some of them towards Port Sudan. Fighting between government soldiers and rebels from Darfur and eastern Sudan broke out on 19 June near the town of Tokar, 120 km south of Port Sudan. The rebels claimed to have captured government soldiers, weapons, and ammunition. On 21 June they claimed to have destroyed three government camps close to Tokar. The Sudanese army denied the rebel claims, and said in a separate statement that it had dealt with the offensive and was in complete control of the area. Fergus Thomas, field coordinator for the International Rescue Committee (IRC), one of two NGOs working in the rebel-controlled area, said he had seen Beja rebels celebrating following clashes with government forces. Diplomats in Asmara warned that the east could become Sudan's next flashpoint, given that rebels in the region had complained of neglect and marginalisation by the government in Khartoum. The rebels claimed the government had started building up its military presence near Hamesh Koreb, the largest town in the northeast of the region. "There are preparations from the other side [of Hamesh Koreb] - government soldiers, troops, tanks and weapons," Barqueen said. "We cannot say that it is quiet or ended or finished." Sudanese rebels have controlled a small piece of territory in eastern Sudan, adjacent to Eritrea, since the late 1990s. They have clashed intermittently with government forces in the east since 1996, but tension has risen in recent months. EFFECTS OF CONFLICT A report by the IRC issued on Monday warned: "Prolonged fighting in the area has combined with chronic drought and epidemic levels of animal disease placing the whole Beja way of life at risk." Relief workers estimate that between 45,000 and 186,000 Beja live in the 15,000 sq km rebel-controlled area. The total Beja population in eastern Sudan is about 2.4 million, with another 400,000 living in Egypt and Eritrea. "[The Beja] are one of the few remaining communities in the world who still depend solely on their livestock for their economic security," the IRC noted. "If the health needs of animals are not addressed in this community, you effectively don’t address the fundamental need of their community." It said livestock populations had declined by roughly 40 percent over the past five years, mainly due to diseases such as tuberculosis, tripanosomiasis and brucellosis. "We also found isolated communities with cases of rinderpest and anthrax, so that’s particularly worrying and something that needs to be addressed as an emergency," Thomas said. The diseases threaten both the livelihood and health of the Beja. "Brucellosis is especially worrying, because it causes sterility and is transmitted through drinking milk," he added. Traditionally, Beja women wean their babies very early and replace their milk with animal milk or a mix of sugar and water. "You are getting a lot of malnourishment in children, because they are not getting their mother’s milk," he noted. "Mothers are feeding them with sugar solution, which is not providing them with the nutrients that they need. That is leading to childhood malnutrition and extremely low red-blood-cell counts." The fighting had also blocked access to markets in government-controlled areas of Sudan, he added. To sell their livestock at the markets, the Beja would have to cross a military front line.