Darfur Sees New Cycle of Bloodshed, Refugees

Darfur may be on a road back to the pitched fighting between rebels, militias and the Sudanese army that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions 5 years ago, prompting the US to call it genocide, the New York Times reports. The Sudanese government recently stepped up operations in the area, creating “a population that is just being attacked from both sides.”

As efforts to negotiate peace have faltered, the Sudanese government has moved on areas where rebels have been, with air strikes, regular army units, and the Arab militias known as janjaweed. Destruction, rape, and pillaging have followed in an eerie repeat of the conflict through 2003 and 2004. “Since the first of the year another 75,000 people in Darfur have been displaced,” Bush's envoy to Sudan tells the Times. (More Darfur stories.)