KHARTOUM: Clashes between Arab and non-Arab groups in Sudan’s restive Darfur region have killed at least seven people, state media reported Saturday.
Violence erupted on Wednesday around 20 kilometers from the South Darfur state capital Nyala pitting Arab herders against farmers from the Daju minority and other non-Arab ethnic groups, witnesses said.
It was not immediately clear what sparked the fighting.
“A group of herders riding camels and vehicles attacked the village of Amuri on Friday, leaving the site burnt and four people killed,” the official SUNA news agency said, adding that two people were killed between Wednesday and Thursday.
Another person was killed when the fighting spread to nearby villages, which were “partially burnt” as shops were looted, the news agency added, quoting a government statement.
At least 20 people were treated at Nyala hospital for bullet wounds, a medical source told AFP.
Security forces were dispatched to the area to contain the violence, SUNA said.
Ethnic clashes often break out in Darfur, a vast region the size of France which was ravaged by a bitter civil war that erupted in 2003.
That conflict pitted ethnic minority rebels against the Arab-dominated government of then-president Omar Al-Bashir.
Some 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations.
While the conflict has subsided over the years, violence still flares between nomadic herders and settled farmers over access to scarce water and grazing land.
Sudan is still grappling with the crippling aftermath of a military coup led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan in October last year.
Civilian groups signed a preliminary deal with the military to end the crisis earlier this month but it has been criticized as “opaque.”
Conflicts in Sudan’s far-flung regions have killed around 900 people this year and driven almost 300,000 from their homes, according to a report this month by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Clashes in Sudan’s Darfur kill seven: state media
https://arab.news/ne2f9
Clashes in Sudan’s Darfur kill seven: state media
- A group of herders riding camels and vehicles attacked the village of Amuri
- Ethnic clashes often break out in Darfur
Drone strike kills 10, including 7 children, in Sudan’s El-Obeid: medical source
- An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: A drone strike on the Sudanese city of El-Obeid killed 10 people including seven children on Monday, a medical source told AFP.
An eyewitness said the strike hit a house in the center of the army-controlled capital of North Kordofan, which the rival paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have sought to encircle for months.
Since April 2023, Sudan has been gripped by a war between the army and the RSF, with some of the worst violence currently unfolding in Sudan’s strategic southern Kordofan region.
El-Obeid, the region’s main city, lies on a key crossroads connecting the capital Khartoum with the vast western Darfur region — where the army lost its last major position in October.
Following its victory in Darfur, the RSF has pushed through Kordofan, seeking to recapture Sudan’s central corridor and tightening its siege with its local allies around several army-held cities.
Hundreds of thousands face mass starvation across the region.
Last year, the army broke a paramilitary siege on El-Obeid, which the RSF has sought to encircle since.
Drone strikes on Sunday caused a power outage in the city but left no reports of casualties.
Last week, a coalition of armed groups allied with the army said they had retaken several towns south of El-Obeid, which according to a military source could “open up the road between El-Obeid and Dilling” — one of South Kordofan’s besieged cities.
Since it began, the war has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than 11 million people to flee internally and across borders.
It has also created the world’s largest hunger and displacement crises, and been described as a “war of atrocities” by the United Nations.
