KHARTOUM, Sudan
Thousands of protesters gathered Sunday in front of army headquarters in the Sudanese city of Damazin, eyewitnesses said, protesting recent ethnic clashes in the country's south that have killed 200.
Protesters "tried to
enter the army headquarters" before "setting fire to the state
government building," resident Abdel Qader Ibrahim told AFP by phone from
Damazin, the capital of Sudan's southern Blue Nile state, which borders
Ethiopia and South Sudan.
At least two hundred people
were killed in two days last week, official media said Saturday, after clashes
broke out over reported land disputes between members of the Hausa people and
rival groups.
Residents said homes and shops
were set ablaze and that hundreds had fled intense gunfire.
"Hospitals are facing a
huge shortage of medicine as the number of the injured increases," the
state's Minister of Health Jamal Nasser told AFP on Sunday.
State governor Ahmed al-Omda
Badi declared a state of emergency on Friday to quell some of the worst
fighting in recent months.
From July to early October, at
least 149 people were killed and 65,000 displaced in Blue Nile, according to
the United Nations.
Protesters chanted,
"Al-Omda must leave," accusing the governor of failing to protect
them, according to eyewitness Haram Othman.
The Hausa have mobilised
across Sudan, claiming tribal law discriminates against them by preventing them
from owning land in Blue Nile because they were the last group to arrive there.
Access to land is highly
sensitive in the impoverished country, where agriculture and livestock account
for 43 percent of employment and 30 percent of GDP, according to UN and World
Bank statistics.
Sudan has been grappling with
deepening political unrest and a spiralling economic crisis since a military
coup last year led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
A surge in ethnic violence in
recent months has highlighted the security breakdown in Sudan since the coup.
Nearly 600 people have been
killed and at least 211,000 forced to flee their homes in inter-communal
conflicts across the country since January, according to the UN. - AFP
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