KHARTOUM // Sudanese forces left 27 dead and scores wounded inside a refugee camp in Darfur today, rebel leaders said. Around 100 government vehicles surrounded Kalma camp in South Darfur at 6am this morning and opened fire, a rebel spokesman said. A UN source spoke of unconfirmed reports that armed Sudanese police had been involved.
Kalma camp, home to 90,000 people who fled their homes during five years of fighting, has long been a centre of unrest. The government has accused armed rebel supporters of taking refuge in Kalma while residents have accused government-backed militias of mounting a string of raids on the settlement. Yahia El Bashir, the British-based spokesman for one faction of the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), said government troops had gone into the camp to try to clear it of residents.
"I am inside the camp Kalma. Now there is still shooting," Abakr Suleiman, a senior tribal leader inside the settlement, said at 11 am. "There is heavy shooting. They came into the camp and killed people. There are houses burning." Unamid, the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force, said Sudanese police had shown peacekeepers a search warrant authorising them to enter Kalma camp to search for weapons and "possible wanted persons". The authorities have tried unsuccessfully to disarm Kalma residents in the past. International experts say more than 2.5 million Darfuris have been driven from their homes to take shelter in camps like Kalma by five years of violence that has also killed 200,000 people. Sudan accuses Western media of exaggerating the scale of the conflict and puts the death count at 10,000. * Reuters