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KHARTOUM - Darfur rebels said they were advancing on Khartoum on Saturday amid clashes with Sudanese forces just north of the capital, where the army announced a curfew.
The army said in a statement read out on state television that its troops were under rebel attack in Omdurman, the capital's twin city immediately to the northwest, where witnesses reported heavy fighting.
"Army forces are currently facing attack by rebels loyal to (JEM leader) Khalil Ibrahim in the north of Omdurman," the military said.
The rebel Justice and Equality Movement said its fighters had taken control of Wadi Saidna air force base about 10 miles (16 kilometres) north of Khartoum, although this was impossible to independently verify.
"According to the information I have JEM forces are in the capital right now, they took Wadi Saidna air force base and they moved down into the capital," London-based JEM spokesman Ahmed Hussein Adam told AFP by telephone.
"Our forces are everywhere in the capital."
Witnesses said that heavy fighting had been taking place in Omdurman for at least the previous two hours.
Omdurman resident Sadiq Babo Nimr told AFP by telephone that residents were cowering at home amid heavy artillery fire.
"It's just outside my flat, I can hear bombardment from very heavy artillery," he said.
"We're just lying down, there are stray bullets whistling around the building, my wife and children are very scared."
He said that he heard distant gunfire at around 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and the fighting then drew closer. He said that electricity and mobile telephone networks had been cut.
Heavily armed troops patrolled the capital's deserted streets after all shops shut up, another witness told AFP by telephone.
A curfew was imposed in the Sudanese capital from 1400 GMT on Saturday until 0300 GMT Sunday, the interior ministry said.
It urged Khartoum residents to say indoors and be vigilant.
JEM spokesman Adam said the air base had been targetted because this "is the base from where all Sudanese military planes go to Darfur."
It was not immediately known if there were any casualties in the fighting, taking place in civilian areas. Adam said that JEM was committed to international humanitarian law and human rights.
"JEM will never attack civilians or target civilians," Adam said, adding that he had no figures on casualties.
"We reiterate our position to cooperate with the entire international community in democratic transformation and find a comprehensive and genuine solution to the conflict in Darfur."
State media meanwhile said that the Sudanese army had repulsed an attack by Chadian forces on the border Kishkish area, with an army spokesman saying the
Chad raid was a bid to create a diversion from JEM's advance on the capital.
"Our armed forces stood up to the Chadian forces, inflicted casualties on them and drove them back into the Chadian territories," Brigadier Mohammed Osman al-Aghbash told Omdurman Radio.
He accused the Chadian government of providing "direct support" to JEM's "subversive operation" in Khartoum.
A Western diplomat who requested anonymity said that the Sudanese government had called embassies in the capital on Friday to warn of the rebel advance.
"There are rebels that have been moving eastwards from the Chadian border," the diplomat quoted the authorities as saying.
Extra security forces began deploying on the streets of the capital on Friday, he said.
JEM are "trying to prove a point. I don't think anyone expects at this stage to see heavy fighting in the streets. I think they're going to be crushed but the simple fact that they got to Omdurman is huge," the diplomat said.
More than two million people have fled their homes in the western Sudanese region of Darfur since the Khartoum government enlisted militia allies to put down a revolt in the region in 2003.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes said last month that the death toll in Darfur from five years of war, famine and disease might have reached 300,000.
Khartoum says the toll is much lower.
- AFP /ls
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