AFP
“Now our troops are moving from Darfur in an easterly direction towards the capital Khartoum,” Gibril Adam Bilal, of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), told AFP from London.
“Our main fight with this government has already started.”
Sudan’s army spokesman could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bilal said JEM had reached En Nahud, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) east of Darfur in North Kordofan state, on a mission to change the regime led by President Omar al-Bashir.
In 2008 more than 222 people were killed when JEM guerrillas drove about 1,000 kilometers across the desert to Omdurman, just over the River Nile from the presidential palace on the Khartoum side.
Government troops repulsed them after heavy clashes and later sentenced dozens of rebels to death for their role in the assault.
“We are calling for all the political and military movements who are struggling against this government to work together to change this regime,” Bilal said.
In July the government signed the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur with the Liberation and Justice Movement, an alliance of rebel splinter factions.
Darfur’s main armed groups, JEM and factions of the Sudan Liberation Army headed by Minni Minnawi and Abdelwahid Nur, did not sign the deal.
Instead, last month they, along with the SPLM-North rebel group, ratified documents forming the new Sudanese Revolutionary Front dedicated to “popular uprising and armed rebellion” against the National Congress Party regime in Khartoum.
On Sunday the head of the joint African Union-United Nations Mission to Darfur, Ibrahim Gambari, told AFP the new rebel alliance means the door is closing for more groups to join Darfur’s peace process.
According to the U.N. at least 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 when fighting broke out between non-Arab rebels and the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime.
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