KHARTOUM - Militias fought members of a former rebel group in the main town in the Darfur region of Sudan on Monday in clashes which the rebels said left up to seven people dead.

Violence erupted after truckloads of men from the Janjaweed militia, which the Sudan government is accused of backing, entered the town of El Fasher and started looting the market, witnesses and the former rebels said.

A refugee encampment is seen behind El Fasher in northern Darfur, Sudan June 9, 2006. Militias entered the main town in the Darfur region of Sudan on Monday and started looting the market, witnesses and former rebels said. [Reuters]

The Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), a rebel group that signed a peace deal with the government in May, said five members of its armed wing were killed. The death toll could not be independently confirmed.

"We have five martyrs ... two other civilians were also killed," SLM Secretary-General Mustafa Teerab told Reuters. "They (the Janjaweed) looted some shops in the market and then fled," he said.

The African Union, which has a 7,000-strong force in Darfur, said it was investigating the cause of the clashes.

"We have unconfirmed reports that five people were seriously wounded and two people were killed from the SLM," an African Union spokesman in Khartoum said.

Rights groups say the Sudanese government adopted the Janjaweed as an auxiliary force when rebellion flared in the remote western region of Darfur in 2003 after rebels took up arms against the government, charging it with neglect.

Khartoum denies supporting the Janjaweed.

The May peace deal, which only the government and one faction of the SLM signed, has failed to end the violence. Experts say around 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced to flee their homes in the conflict.

Minni Arcua Minnawi, the SLM leader who is now a presidential adviser, has accused the government of rearming the Janjaweed and said on Monday the situation in Darfur was on the verge of returning to "point zero."

"The government needs to put an end to these violations ... We will not take the responsibility of a burning country," he told a news conference.

Asked if he was facing pressure from within his group to return to armed rebellion, Minnawi said: "If we have more violations like this and on purpose, we could reach a point when we won't control the decision."

The African Union agreed last week to extend the mandate of its under-funded force for six months starting January after Sudan rejected the deployment of a large United Nations force. Sudan says a UN force would be like a Western invasion.

The AU also endorsed a proposal for a hybrid AU and United Nations force but conceded some ground to Khartoum by deciding that the UN should have only a supporting role.

The Janjaweed, a term loosely derived from Arabic for "devils on horseback," have attacked rebel groups and unarmed villagers in the countryside on and off for more than three years but they have rarely appeared in strength in large towns.