Al-Bashir said he reserved the right to retaliate against the "outlaw regime," raising the specter of a border war between the two countries who have long traded accusations over support for each others' rebels.The Interior Ministry called on people in Khartoum and its twin city of Omdurman to remain inside while it searched for "infiltrators" — rebels who had doffed their uniforms in the fighting to hide among the people."Security forces need more time to provide full protection for the people and for their property," said the ministry statement.State television for the first time ever broadcast the picture of Khalil Ibrahim, leader of Darfur's Justice and Equality Movement, which carried out the assault, asking on citizens to call a special hotline if they saw him because he was hiding somewhere in Omdurman.
The JEM has become one of the most effective rebel movements in Darfur, where ethnic Africans took up arms against the government in 2003 to protest discrimination. In the last year it has expanded its operations into the neighboring province of Kordofan, even attacking oil installations.Saturday night's assault, however, was the first time they had made it anywhere near the capital.While the rebels declared the assault a success, the government was quick to describe it as a disaster for the rebels, displaying prisoners and captured vehicles on television.
With just a few thousands members, JEM is outnumbered and far less equipped than Sudan's military, which believed to be more than 100,000-strong. Yet the group presents the most prominent military challenge to the Sudanese government in Darfur.The assault puts greater pressure on the Sudanese government to deal with the festering situation in Darfur, where more than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been chased from their homes. Many of the worst atrocities in the war have been blamed on the janjaweed militia of Arab nomads allied with the government.
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