CAIRO: Clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s West Darfur have killed at least 32 people, according to a local medical official, as Sudanese authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew on the province.
Darfur remains scarred by war after a rebellion in the early 2000s was brutally suppressed. The most recent violence comes two weeks after the UN Security Council ended the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force’s mandate in the Darfur region.
Salah Saleh, a doctor and former medical director at the main hospital in the provincial capital of Genena, said the clashes wounded at least 79 others. “It’s horrible,” he said. “Until now, people cannot reach any hospitals.”
Salah warned that the casualty toll was likely much higher. The violence erupted on Friday in Genena, when an Arab man was stabbed to death at a market in the Krinding camp for internally displaced people, aid worker Al-Shafei Abdalla said. He said the suspect was arrested.
On Saturday, the dead man’s family — from the Arab Rizeigat tribe — attacked the Krinding camp, burning most of its houses, said Abdalla.
Gov. Mohammed Abdalla Al-Douma said the government would impose a curfew that would include the closure of all markets and a ban on gatherings across the province. Al-Douma granted security forces and soldiers a mandate to use force to control the situation.
The prime minister’s office in Khartoum said in a statement a high-ranking delegation led by the country’s top prosecutor would head to Genena “to take necessary measures” to re-establish stability in West Darfur. The statement did not give a casualty toll from the clashes.
Adam Regal, a spokesman for a local organization that helps run refugee camps in Darfur, shared footage showing the burned homes and property in the Krinding camp following Saturday’s attack.
The video included graphic images of wounded people with blood-stained clothes. The footage also showed women and children carrying their belongings, allegedly fleeing clashes in the camp.
32 killed and 79 injured during deadly clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s West Darfur
https://arab.news/g6qfs
32 killed and 79 injured during deadly clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs in Sudan’s West Darfur
- The footage also showed women and children carrying their belongings, allegedly fleeing clashes in the camp
Syria’s leader set to visit Berlin with deportations in focus
- Sharaa is scheduled to meet his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president’s office said
BERLIN: Syrian President Ahmed Al-Sharaa is expected in Berlin on Tuesday for talks, as German officials seek to step up deportations of Syrians, despite unease about continued instability in their homeland.
Sharaa is scheduled to meet his counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German president’s office said.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s office has yet to announce whether he would also hold talks with Sharaa during the visit.
Since ousting Syria’s longtime leader Bashar Assad in late 2024, Sharaa has made frequent overseas trips as the former Islamist rebel chief undergoes a rapid reinvention.
He has made official visits to the United States and France, and a series of international sanctions on Syria have been lifted.
The focus of next week’s visit for the German government will be on stepping up repatriations of Syrians, a priority for Merz’s conservative-led coalition since Assad was toppled.
Roughly one million Syrians fled to Germany in recent years, many of them arriving in 2015-16 to escape the civil war.
In November Merz, who fears being outflanked by the far-right AfD party on immigration, insisted there was “no longer any reason” for Syrians who fled the war to seek asylum in Germany.
“For those who refuse to return to their country, we can of course expel them,” he said.
- ‘Dramatic situation’ -
In December, Germany carried out its first deportation of a Syrian since the civil war erupted in 2011, flying a man convicted of crimes to Damascus.
But rights groups have criticized such efforts, citing continued instability in Syria and evidence of rights abuses.
Violence between the government and minority groups has repeatedly flared in multi-confessional Syria since Sharaa came to power, including recent clashes between the army and Kurdish forces.
Several NGOs, including those representing the Kurdish and Alawite Syrian communities in Germany, have urged Berlin to axe Sharaa’s planned visit, labelling it “totally unacceptable.”
“The situation in Syria is dramatic. Civilians are being persecuted solely on the basis of their ethnic or religious affiliation,” they said in a joint statement.
“It is incomprehensible to us and legally and morally unacceptable that the German government knowingly intends to receive a person suspected of being responsible for these acts at the chancellery.”
The Kurdish Community of Germany, among the signatories of that statement, also filed a complaint with German prosecutors in November, accusing Sharaa of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.
There have also been voices urging caution within government.
On a trip to Damascus in October, Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said that the potential for Syrians to return was “very limited” since the war had destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure.
But his comments triggered a backlash from his own conservative Christian Democratic Union party.
