KHARTOUM, 27 October 2005 — Rebels in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur have killed the manager of the Faisal Islamic Bank in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, the official SUNA news agency reported yesterday. The agency said the rebels also commandeered his vehicle. The man was identified as Ibrahim Bashir Jamaa by the pro-government Sudan Media Center. It claimed his attackers were three members of the Sudan Liberation Movement, one of the main rebel groups in Darfur, adding that the men shot Jamaa three times after he refused to hand them the keys to the bank. They then fled south, according to the Center.

Meanwhile, a Darfur rebel group said it would pull out of AU-mediated talks trying to bring peace to the western region of Sudan if the presidency of the body moved to Khartoum. Khalil Ibrahim of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said the AU-mediated talks in Nigeria could not be impartial if the presidency of the pan-African body moved to President Omar Hassan Bashir’s government in Sudan as scheduled next year.