Sudan violating ban on arms, group says

CAIRO, Egypt — A human rights group said Thursday that Sudan's government continues to violate a U.N. arms embargo in Darfur and urged the United Nations to give its planned peacekeeping force for the region the authority to confiscate weapons from combatants.

In its latest report on Darfur, the London-based Amnesty International published photographs it said were obtained from credible witnesses supporting the claim of arms embargo violations.

The photographs were taken in July and purportedly show military shipments at the Sudanese army airport in the West Darfur state capital of El Geneina, the group said.

One photograph shows Sudanese soldiers moving containers from an Antonov cargo plane onto military trucks and two others show Russian-supplied Mi-7 and Mi-24 attack helicopters at the airport, Amnesty said.

"Sudan flaunts its impudence of the U.N. arms embargo and peace agreements by persisting to send arms into Darfur," said Larry Cox, the group's director in the United States.

In 2005, the U.N. Security Council imposed a wide arms embargo on all parties in the conflict in Darfur, including the Sudanese government. It was a follow-up on a previous 2004 embargo that also included the government-armed janjaweed militia.

Brian Wood, a military expert at Amnesty's London offices, said that while there is no way of knowing what was in the photographed containers, the military aircraft at the El Geneina airport had arrived from Sudan's capital on flights that were not reported to or permitted by the U.N.

"And that means that those are violations of the Security Council arms embargo to Darfur," Wood told The Associated Press by telephone. "We have indicated that we know of similar flights with small arms and weapons to militia and armed groups that have attacked civilians in the past."

Amnesty's report also said air raids by Sudanese forces continued in Darfur, with strikes reported by the U.N. in North Darfur in late June. Sudanese forces also used Antonov aircraft for several bombing raids on South Darfur in August, near the town of Adila, the group said.

On July 31, the U.N. Security Council authorized the deployment of 20,000 peacekeepers and 6,000 civilian police in a joint U.N.-African Union operation for Darfur, which the Sudanese government had long resisted.