Darfur rebel leader Khalil Ibrahim said on Monday he would launch more attacks on Sudan’s capital Khartoum until the government fell. “This is just the start of a process and the end is the termination of this regime,” Ibrahim, whose Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) attacked Khartoum at the weekend, said in a satellite phone call. “Don’t expect just one more attack.” Ibrahim said he was speaking from Omdurman, the western Khartoum suburb where the attack occurred - just across the Nile river from the heart of the capital.
But there was no independent verification of IbrahimÂ’s whereabouts but authorities said they were reimposing an indefinite curfew in Omdurman while security forces searched for rebels in the area. The weekend attack was the first time fighting had reached the capital in decades of conflict between the traditionally Arab-dominated central government and rebels from far-flung regions in the oil-producing nation - AfricaÂ’s biggest country. Sudan said neighbouring Chad was backing the rebel attack, in which about 65 people were believed to have been killed.
Security forces cordoned off an area of Khartoum central on Monday, chasing a small group of suspected rebels into a building, witnesses said. “There’s gun fire but it’s one way. There’s no exchange of fire,” said one witness. President Omar Hassan al-Bashir’s government also arrested Islamist opposition leader Hassan al-Turabi and at least four other top members of his party on Monday, aides said. JEM has an Islamist agenda and some of its leaders were allies of Turabi in the past, but he denies backing the rebels.