Sudan

As rebels in Chad fought for a second day to take control of the nation's capital, analysts said Sunday that the outcome of the attempted coup could have far-reaching implications for the Darfur conflict in neighboring Sudan.

Two top U.N. officials said Friday that the continuing conflict in Darfur had thwarted a yearlong effort to start peace talks and deploy a peacekeeping force there, while new conflict in neighboring Chad could ignite a regional war. U.N. peacekeeping chief Jean-Marie Guehenno and the special envoy for Sudan, Jan Eliasson, told the Security Council that increasing clashes between Sudanese troops and rebels in western Darfur made it difficult to deliver aid to the area and deploy peacekeepers.

Chad's prime minister blamed the influx of about 300,000 refugees from Sudan's neighboring Darfur region for his country's worsening tensions with Sudan, and he demanded that the international community remove the people. Prime Minister Nouradin Koumakoye warned that if the refugees are not transferred elsewhere, Chad's government would expel them on its own. Koumakoye repeated charges that Sudan is fomenting violence in Chad because Darfur refugees are sheltering there . Chadian rebels attacked the capital this month before being driven off, but Sudan denies any involvement.

Three men delivering food aid in Sudan for the United Nations have been killed, the World Food Program said. The attack came about two weeks after the WFP said banditry was reducing by half the amount of food normally transported to the western region of Darfur at this time of year. "By attacking humanitarian staff, these assailants are also hurting innocent people who need food assistance," representative Kenro Oshidari said. The agency said 56 trucks had been involved in hijackings this year in Sudan.

The stalwart people of this tiny, crescent-shaped island have fought off invasions from mainland Khartoum for more than 700 years. Early settlers of Tuti, nestled at the confluence of the White Nile and Blue Nile, relied on the rushing river to fend off hostile tribes. As Khartoum grew into Sudan's bustling capital, residents here clung to their cultural isolation, striving to maintain the feel of a sleepy farming village, even though their island is just a stone's throw from downtown.

Census-takers will soon fan out across Sudan's vast and famously inhospitable terrain in the first nationwide head count in 25 years. But the checklist of questions won't include two hot issues that lie at the heart of this nation's recent history of conflict: religion and ethnicity. The government, led by President Omar Hassan Ahmed Bashir, has decided not to tally numbers for Muslims, Christians and other faiths, nor will it gather data about tribe or ethnic origin.

Sudan census: An article in Monday's Section A about an upcoming census in Sudan said the number of refugees returning to southern Sudan from Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and other countries was expected to reach 6,000 this month. The 6,000 figure is not a monthly total; it is an estimate of weekly arrivals during the month.

The young assassins prowled Khartoum's streets for hours on New Year's Eve, looking for Westerners on the way home from parties. They stopped a Land Cruiser but released it after seeing two children in the back seat. Another foreigner was let go because he was the "wrong" nationality, said Khartoum state Gov. Abdul Halim Mutaafi. "They wanted Americans or British," he said.

A plane carrying southern Sudan's defense minister, Dominic Dim Deng, and a presidential advisor crashed, killing all 21 people on board. It went down in a remote area of southern Sudan.