The spokeswoman for the court in The Hague, Laurence Blairon, said Bashir was suspected of being criminally responsible for “murdering, exterminating, raping, torturing and forcibly transferring large numbers of civilians and pillaging their property.”

She said the violence in Darfur was the result of a common plan organised at the highest level of the Sudanese government, but there was no evidence of genocide.
 
The court would transmit as soon as possible to the government of Sudan a request for his arrest and surrender, she added.

It is the ICC's first ever warrant issued against a sitting head of state.
ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo had requested that the court issue a warrant for Bashir's arrest in July 2008.

The UN estimates some 300,000 people have died and millions been displaced in six years of conflict in the region.

A further 2.7 million people are estimated to have been uprooted by the conflict, which began when mostly non-Arab rebels took up arms against the government.