Khartoum: Rebels from the Sudan Revolutionary Front said on Friday that they had shot down a Sudanese army helicopter in South Kordofan, near a town seized by government forces last week.
A witness said they had seen smoke trailing from the aircraft above the town of Abu Kershola.
A spokesman for the SRF, a coalition of four rebel groups, Gibril Adam Bilal, told AFP rebels “shot down a government military aircraft near the town of Abu Kershola” on Friday.
Khartoum confirmed the loss of a military aircraft in the area but blamed the crash on a technical fault.
“We have several aircraft on routine missions in that zone, and one of them crashed due to a technical fault,” army spokesman Colonel Sawarmi Khalid Sa’ad told AFP.
The rebel spokesman also reported clashes with government troops during a visit by the chief-of-staff to the town.
He said rebels had killed two officers, captured tens of soldiers and seized two military vehicles.
Sa’ad denied the “false [reports] of the deaths of members of the armed forces,” saying “there were no clashes”.
But a witness in Abu Kershola, in the east of the embattled Sudanese province of South Kordofan, said the incidents did take place.
“During a visit by senior army officials, shots were fired at army positions in the town from the north, and the assailants exchanged fire with the army, who were using tanks,” the witness told AFP under condition of anonymity.
He also said he had “seen smoke and flames coming out of a helicopter,” and that after the incident, “the aircraft that transported the officials left the town”.
The army last week said it had recaptured Abu Kershola, which for a month had been controlled by the SRF.
The SRF is made up of three rebel factions from Darfur that have been fighting the government since 2003, and by the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North.
