TAWILLA: With Darfur’s remaining rebels still refusing to sign a peace deal, fighters that were united against the Sudanese government have turned on each other. Around Tawilla thousands of civilians have been displaced since the beginning of the year following deadly violence between two ethnically-divided factions of the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA).

In what has become a turf war for control of rebel-held territory, gunmen on pick-up trucks and horseback have been burning huts, killing, looting, and even raping women, in raids just as deadly as those of the Arab “Janjaweed” militia.

Villages that had been emptied due to raids by government forces are once again deserted. Camps for displaced people on the outskirts of town lie abandoned, their terrified former residents having barricaded themselves in makeshift shelters against the razor wire surrounding the African Union peacekeepers’ base.

“Initially the trouble here was the government forces,” said an AU military observer based in Tawilla. “But now these different SLA groups fighting each other have become the problem.”—Dawn/The Guardian News Service