KHARTOUM — Clashes between Arab tribesmen
and ethnic minority farmers in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region have killed eight
people and wounded 16, an aid group said on Saturday.
اضافة اعلان
The fighting broke out on Friday in
Krink, some 80km
from the West Darfur state capital of Geneina, when armed Arab tribesmen
attacked villages of the non-Arab Massalit minority in retaliation for the
killing of two tribesmen, the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced
in Darfur, an independent aid organization, said.
The clashes “led to the deaths of eight citizens,”
said its spokesman Adam Regal.
Dozens of homes were burned and large numbers of
families displaced, he added.
Rzeigat tribal leaders said the fighting was sparked
by the killing of two Arab tribesmen on Thursday by gunmen who took refuge in
Massalit villages.
The aid group accused the Janjaweed of orchestrating
the attack on the Massalit villages. The mainly Arab militia, many of whose
members have since been integrated into the security forces, gained notoriety
in the early 2000s for its role in the repression of an ethnic minority
rebellion in Darfur.
Regal said Krink and neighboring villages were
suffering under a “tight economic blockade by the Janjaweed militias,” in
addition to recurrent “threats” and “looting.”
Scores of people have been killed and hundreds of houses
torched in several bouts of violence in Darfur in recent months, the United
Nations and medics say.
The conflict that erupted in 2003 between ethnic
minority rebels and the Arab-dominated government in Khartoum killed 300,000
people and displaced 2.5 million, according to
UN figures.
Large-scale fighting has abated across much of
Darfur but the region remains awash with weapons and deadly clashes often erupt
over access to pasture or water.
The clashes often take on an ethnic dimension as the
region’s Arab tribes are largely pastoralists while many of the region’s
settled farmers are drawn from minority groups.
A peace deal was signed in 2020 but since a military coup in
October,
Darfur has seen violence spike, with hundreds killed in fighting
between herders and farmers.
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