Flights from Egypt to Khartoum stopped due to fighting

CAIRO (Reuters) - Commercial flights between Cairo and the Sudanese capital were suspended on Sunday a day after Darfur rebels fought Sudanese troops in a Khartoum suburb, Egyptian airport sources and state media said.

National carrier EgyptAir cancelled its morning flight to Khartoum after receiving word from the Khartoum international airport that the airport was closed for security reasons, Egyptian state news agency MENA said.

Sudan's government said on Saturday it had defeated a rebel attack on Khartoum after fighting reached the city for the first time in decades of conflict between the traditionally Arab-dominated government and rebels from peripheral regions.

Sudan on Sunday indefinitely extended a curfew in Khartoum saying some Darfur rebels were still on the loose, and some fighting could still be heard in the far west of Omdurman in Khartoum state, witnesses said.

Sudan Airways had suspended a flight to Khartoum on Sunday and was putting passengers up in a Cairo hotel, but a flight to Port Sudan in northeastern Sudan had taken off, MENA said.

Airport sources in Cairo, one of the main air links to Sudan, said no other flights were taking off for Khartoum. Kenya Airways, which also flies to Khartoum via Cairo, said it was waiting for news from Khartoum on whether an evening flight would be able to go ahead, an airline official said.

International experts estimate that some 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million made homeless in Darfur in Sudan's west since mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms there five years ago.

(Writing by Cynthia Johnston; editing by Sami Aboudi)