News Article by AFP posted on October 28, 2000 at 06:40:56: EST (-5 GMT)
Sudanese government troops retake eastern town of Hameshkorib
KHARTOUM, Oct 28 (AFP) - Sudanese troops have recaptured the
eastern border town of Hameshkorib after fierce battles in which
rebels sustained heavy losses, the armed forces spokesman told state
radio Saturday.
Spokesman General Mohamed Osman Yassin said government forces
were now in "full control of the fighting zones" and that rebels on
Sudan's eastern front, fighting a 17-year-old civil war, had been
completely ousted.
Troops "forced their way into Hameshkorib after fierce battles
around the town inflicting heavy losses in equipment and lives on
the rebels and are still pursuing the fleeing rebels," according to
an army statement broadcast on state television Friday night.
But an official of the opposition National Democratic Alliance
said NDA forces had decided to make a "tactical retreat" from the
town they had occupied since March to protect civilians from
government shelling.
The proximity of fighting "would have resulted in substantial
losses among civilians, especially as the government forces were
leading air raids against the town" of 40,000 people, NDA official
Yasser Arman told AFP in Cairo.
But General Yassin said government troops had led a "carefully
calculated military plan," advancing gradually towards the town near
the border with Eritrea to "avert jeopardising the lives of the
civilians."
"With the liberation of Hameshkorib, the armed forces have
defeated the last of the traitors in the eastern region," he told
state-run Omdurman Radio on Saturday. Hameshkorib is situated in
northern Kassala province.
The government army "now exercises full control of the fighting
zones", adding that other areas further south, "particularly those
of the oilfields in Higlig and the White Nile, are fully secured and
quiet."
A civil war has opposed southern rebels and the central
authority in Khartoum for the past 17 years, with northern
opposition groups joining the war in 1995. The NDA groups both
southern and northern rebels.