Sudan: deadly intercommunity clashes on the border with Eritrea

An abandoned village in the Nuba mountains of Sudan Maureen Didde / Wikimedia Commons

Text by: Léonard Vincent Follow

New clashes between communities mourned eastern Sudan last weekend. Official and local sources give different reports, varying between three and ten dead after several days of tension, and dozens of injured. These clashes have once again brought the Beni Amer and Nouba communities face to face in Kassala, the border town with Eritrea.

Publicity

Read more

Many residents of Kassala took out their phones on Sunday May 10 to film their neighborhood. In their videos, we see columns of black smoke, destroyed, looted and smoking houses, and angry people.

According to residents of the city, it all started last Tuesday with a fight in a bakery between two men, which degenerated Thursday and Friday into violent clashes between groups from the Beni Amer communities on one side and Nouba on the other. The situation was still not under control despite police intervention on Sunday, and clashes were again extremely violent in several neighborhoods, according to the state governor.

The president of the Sovereign Council, General Al-Bourhane, intervened Sunday evening, via a message read on national television. He denounced "  the enemy's conspirators of the people  " - implicitly targeting the still active supporters of the ousted president Omar al-Bashir - and promised firm intervention by the security forces.

A peace treaty and an amnesty had however been signed in March between the two tribes, in the presence of Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok, while very deadly clashes had already taken place, from May 2019, in Gedaref and Port- Sudan .

► In Port Sudan, tribal clashes resume despite state of emergency

Newsletter Receive all international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_FR

  • Sudan
  • Eritrea
  • Omar el-Béchir

On the same subject

Sudan: Suppression of a demonstration in favor of dismissed soldiers

Sudan

Sudan: 2020 risks being sown with pitfalls

Sudan

Sudan: Abdallah Hamdok's historic visit to the Nuba Mountains region