SUDAN: The Sudanese government is still attacking villagers in Darfur and rebel groups there are looting goods and abducting civilians despite an April ceasefire, a rights group said yesterday.
The New York-based Human Rights Watch also urged the UN Security Council to press Khartoum to take immediate action to reverse "ethnic cleansing" in the western Darfur region.
The Security Council meets at a special session on Sudan in Nairobi on Thursday and Friday.
The report said government action had already resulted in ethnic cleansing in Darfur and also accused the two main rebel groups fighting in the western region of regularly violating the ceasefire.
"The government in particular has continued to use helicopter gunships in bombing attacks on civilian objects. Fighting and displacement continue, particularly in South Darfur," the report says of attacks as recent as October.
"Unless the Security Council backs up its earlier ultimatums with strong action, ethnic cleansing in Darfur will be consolidated," said Mr Peter Takirambudde, executive director of Human Rights Watch for Africa.
Khartoum has defended more recent attacks as legitimate responses to the insurgency.
The report said ethnic cleansing in Darfur consists of "forcibly displacing people, then preventing them from returning home safely" and said government forces were raiding camps using tear gas to force some 1.5 million displaced people to relocate to areas other than their homes.
The report also slammed the rebel Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) saying they "have abducted civilians, attacked police stations and other government institutions and raided and looted substantial numbers of livestock and commercial goods".
The civil war in Darfur erupted in 2003, when two rebel groups rose up against the government they said neglected the vast west of Sudan. Government attacks followed and critics say Khartoum sent armed Arab militias to put down the rebellion.
Meanwhile a BBC report claims to have revealed new evidence of mass ethnic killings and rape in Darfur. In one town the BBC team visited, Kidinyir, at least 80 children had been killed as well as many adults.
Almost 400 non-Arab villages in Darfur have either been burnt down or attacked, indicating a systematic and organised attempt to kill non-Arabs.