Sunday, accusing it of supporting fighters who assaulted the
capital the night before, and warned that a top Darfur rebel leader
was hiding somewhere in the city.
A curfew was lifted in Khartoum but remained in effect in the
capital's twin city of Omdurman, where rebels were still loose,
state-run radio reported quoting police Maj. Gen. Mohamed
Abdul-Majeed. The country's official news agency said more than 300
rebels were arrested Sunday across Omdurman.
The surprise assault late Saturday was the closest Darfur rebels
have ever come to Sudan's seat of government, hundreds of miles
from their bases in the far west of the country.
The government issued several statements claiming to have
crushed the rebels and paraded images of captured and bloodied
fighters on television. State media said 50 rebel trucks were
seized in Omdurman and a neighboring village.
"I would like to assure people that everything is now under
control, the rebel forces have been totally destroyed," said
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir in a televised address Sunday,
wearing military fatigues.
"These forces come from Chad who trained them ... we hold the
Chadian regime fully responsible for what happened," he said. "We
have no choice but to sever relations."
Al-Bashir said he reserved the right to retaliate against the
"outlaw regime," raising the specter of a border war between the
two countries who have long traded accusations over support for
each others' rebels.
The Interior Ministry called on people in Khartoum and Omdurman
to remain inside while it searched for "infiltrators" -- rebels
who had doffed their uniforms in the fighting to hide among the
people.
Abdul-Majeed told the city's government-run radio that some
rebels are still operating in Omdurman.
Extra checkpoints were still in place Sunday throughout
Khartoum, and an Associated Press reporter saw at least three
rebels being arrested in a northern section of the city.
State television for the first time ever broadcast the picture
of Khalil Ibrahim, leader of Darfur's Justice and Equality
Movement, which carried out the assault, asking citizens to call a
special hotline if they saw him because he was hiding somewhere in
Omdurman. The government later announced a reward for information
leading to his capture.
The JEM has become one of the most effective rebel movements in
Darfur, where ethnic Africans took up arms against the government
in 2003 to protest discrimination. In the last year it has expanded
its operations into the neighboring province of Kordofan, even
attacking oil installations.
Saturday night's assault, however, was the first time they had
made it anywhere near the capital.
While the rebels declared the assault a success, the government
was quick to describe it as a disaster for the rebels, displaying
prisoners and captured vehicles on television.
"This attempt was a foolish act and those who carried it out
did not take into account the negative consequences -- the attempt
was based on lies and disinformation," said military spokesman
Brig. Gen. Osman al-Agbash.
With just a few thousand members, JEM is outnumbered and far
less equipped than Sudan's military, which believed to be more than
100,000-strong. Yet the group presents the most prominent military
challenge to the Sudanese government in Darfur.
The assault puts greater pressure on the Sudanese government to
deal with the situation in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people
have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes since
2003. Sudan denies backing the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads
accused of the worst atrocities in the conflict.
Attempts to revive peace talks between Sudan and rebel groups
have failed to stem the violence. Rebel groups accuse the Khartoum
regime of stonewalling the deployment of a United Nations
peacekeeping force that would try to establish security before
peace talks.
The instability on Sudan's western border has spilled over into
neighboring Chad, with armed groups and refugees crossing the
remote border on a regular basis and destabilizing both countries
and straining relations.
"These forces are Chadian forces originally, they moved from
there led by Khalil Ibrahim who is an agent of the Chadian regime.
It is a Chadian attack," al-Bashir said Sunday morning.
For its part, Chad has accused Sudanese authorities of arming
rebels who launched a failed assault February on the Chadian
capital, N'Djamena. The rebels reached the gate of the presidential
palace, but fled toward Sudan after Chad's army repelled them in
fighting that left hundreds dead.
Though the two countries signed a peace agreement in March
promising to prevent armed groups from operating along each other's
shared borders, the accusations have continued unabated.