KHARTOUM —
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.
اضافة اعلان
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 UN.
Protesters
chanted, “Al-Omda must leave,” accusing the governor of failing to protect
them, according to eyewitness Haram Othman.
The Hausa have
mobilized 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 spiraling 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.
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