DARFUR, Sudan
Clashes between Arab and non-Arab groups in Sudan's Darfur region have left at least 24 people dead, dozens of homes burned, and thousands displaced, an official said on Wednesday.
The latest violence in Sudan's
westernmost region near Chad erupted between members of Arab tribes and the
Masalit non-Arab group in the town of Foro Baranga, about 185 kilometres (115 miles)
from Geneina the capital of West Darfur state.
"The death toll has
reached around 24 people on both sides," according to Mohammed Hussein
Teeman, of the Foro Baranga community council.
He said the fighting broke out
Saturday.
The violence prompted Sudanese
authorities to declare a night curfew and a month-long state of emergency
across West Darfur.
Security forces have been
dispatched over the past days and the situation had calmed by Wednesday, he
said.
About 50 homes were burned in
the Foro Baranga area, "leading to the displacement of an estimated 4,000
families (about 20,000 people)," according to the United Nations Office
for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
Ethnic clashes often break out
in Darfur, a vast region the size of France which was ravaged by a civil war
that erupted in 2003.
That conflict pitted ethnic
minority rebels against the Arab-dominated government of then-president Omar
al-Bashir. Khartoum responded by unleashing the notorious Janjaweed militia,
recruited from among the region's mainly Arab nomadic peoples.
Around 300,000 people were
killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations.
Rights groups say many of the
Janjaweed's members were integrated into the feared paramilitary Rapid Support
Forces, commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, now de facto deputy leader of
Sudan.
Experts have said tribal
conflicts increased in Sudan after the 2020 end of a UN-African Union
peacekeeping mission, and in a security vacuum following the 2021 coup led by
army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Throughout Sudan last year, such conflicts killed around 900 people and displaced almost 300,000, OCHA said.
Last April, senior Janjaweed
militia leader Ali Muhammad Ali Abd al-Rahman, also known by the nom de guerre
Ali Kushayb, faced the Hague-based International Criminal Court in its first
trial for war crimes in Darfur.
Bashir, who has been in
custody in Khartoum since his 2019 ouster, has been wanted by the ICC for more
than a decade over charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity
in Darfur.
No comments:
Post a Comment