KHARTOUM (AFP) — A Darfur rebel group said on Sunday that it had decided to free five oil workers, two of them foreigners, that it kidnapped in the neighbouring Kordofan region of Sudan late last month.
The Islamist rebels of the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) said they would free the hostages, who include an Egyptian and an Iraqi, through the United Nations in the next few days.
"The head of our movement, Khalil Ibrahim, has given orders for the release of the five and we are expecting them to be swiftly handed over to the United Nations," JEM field commander Abdelaziz el-Nur Ashr told AFP.
"This will be done in the next few days," Ashr said, adding that Ibrahim's decision had been strongly influenced by an appeal from the Egyptian government.
The same field commander had said in recent days that negotiations were under way to free the five oil workers, whose release the rebels had previously conditioned on their employers' withdrawal from working with the Khartoum government in developing the country's oil resources.
The JEM said on October 25 it had kidnapped the oil workers, three Sudanese, an Iraqi and an Egyptian, and that its captives were "safe and in good condition... They will be safe as long as the government doesn't bomb us."
The five were abducted on October 23, it said, naming the two foreigners as engineers Ahmed Heyman Mohammed from Iraq and Joseph William Samuel of Egypt.
Asked on Friday about the JEM's earlier ultimatum to foreign oil firms to quit Sudan, Ashr said it expired on Thursday and that "in future these companies will be solely responsible for what happens to them."
The rebel group had warned it would attack foreign oil companies on the expiry of the deadline, but the Khartoum government played down the threat, saying it would ensure the security of oil facilities across the country.
Ashr said the JEM would target Chinese firms in particular.
"China is the main supplier of weapons to Sudan, it has always supported the government in the UN Security Council and it hasn't provided even a single sack of grain to the people of Darfur," he said.
The five oil workers were seized in an attack on a facility at Defra run by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, a consortium involving China's CNPC, India's ONGC, Malaysia's Petronas and state-owned Sudapet.
The oilfield produces more than half of the country's output of some 500,000 barrels of oil per day, most of which is exported to China.
Beijing has often been accused of failing to exert pressure on Sudan's President Omar al-Beshir to stop the bloodshed in Darfur, where conflict has left at least 200,000 dead and displaced more than two million, according to UN figures.
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