By Agencies

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Sudan's army has killed a key rebel leader from the western Darfur region along with 30 of his troops, officials said, three days after anti-government forces said they had begun advancing on the capital Khartoum.

The government on Sunday was touting the death of Khalil Ibrahim and several of his associates as a key victory over the rebels who had rejected a peace deal.

"The Sudanese army announce that they killed Khalil Ibrahim in fighting today west of Wad Banda in North Kordofan," the official Sudan News Agency (SUNA) reported.

Abdullah Ali Massar, the country's information minister, said at a news conference later on Sunday that the battle was continuing.

Ibrahim had headed the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), the most heavily armed group in the Darfur region, which the government had accused of being being behind earlier attacks.

On Saturday, the Sudanese army said the JEM attacked three areas in North Kordofan state - adjacent to Darfur - killing an unspecified number of civilians.

Road to Khartoum

Colonel Sawarmi Khalid Saad, an army spokesman, was quoted on Sudan's military website as saying the attacks targeted areas where security forces were not present, targeting local leaders and looting their property in the Umm-Gozain, Goz Abyadh and Aramal areas.

The death of Ibrahim could represent a serious blow to the rebel group, although tightly restricted access to Darfur and Sudan's other conflict zones makes it almost impossible to accurately gauge the strength and unity of rebel groups.

The armed forces spokesman said Ibrahim and other leaders had been trying to enter South Sudan, which seceded from Sudan in July under a 2005 peace deal that ended a separate, decades-long civil war.

JEM spokesman Gibril Adam Bilal said on Thursday the group had reached En Nahud, about 120km east of Darfur in North Kordofan, on a mission to topple the regime led by President Omar al-Bashir.

Ibrahim was believed to have recently been living in exile in Libya, where he enjoyed the support of Muammar Gaddafi until the death of the Libyan dictator at the hands of the country's revolutionaries in October.

"But now that [Ibrahim] is gone, we don't know if other leaders from JEM can keep support without help from other countries," our correspondent said, describing the loss of main JEM allies with the fall of Gaddafi and abandonment by Chad's leader, Idriss Deby.

In the past, JEM has launched attacks in Kordofan, about 700km west of Khartoum. They were also behind a 2008 attack in the capital.

In that incident, more than 222 people were killed when JEM guerrillas drove about 1,000km across the desert to Omdurman, just over the River Nile from the presidential palace.

Government troops repulsed them after heavy clashes and later sentenced dozens of rebels to death for their role in the assault.

Doha deal

In July, the government signed the Doha Document for Peace in Darfur with the Liberation and Justice Movement, an alliance of splinter rebel factions.

The agreement, reached in Qatar and backed by the African Union, meant to provide a basis for a cease-fire, power sharing, equal distribution of wealth and compensation for displaced people.

Ismail el-Haj Musa, Sudanese deputy speaker of the council of states, told Al Jazeera: "He completely refused to come to the negotiating table and never joined the peace talks,'' Musa said. "He committed acts against the state."

Darfur's main armed groups, JEM and factions of the Sudan Liberation Army headed by Minni Minnawi and Abdelwahid Nur, did not sign the deal.

Instead, along with the SPLM-North rebels, they last month ratified documents forming the new Sudanese Revolutionary Front dedicated to "popular uprising and armed rebellion" against the National Congress Party regime in Khartoum.

According to the UN at least 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 when fighting broke out between non-Arab rebels and the Arab-dominated Khartoum regime. The government puts the death toll at 10,000.

UN officials say 1.9 million people are internally displaced and still living in camps in Darfur, with about 80,000 newly displaced by fighting this year.

Six people, including President Bashir, are being sought or are before the Hague-based International Criminal Court for crimes allegedly committed in the Darfur region.