The death toll from tribal clashes in southeast Sudan’s Blue Nile state has risen to 31, according to the local security committee.
The Committee confirmed in a statement on Friday evening, Saturday, that the clashes that took place between the Berti and Hausa tribes resulted in the death of “31 killed and 39 wounded”, noting that the clashes took place in the areas of Kaysan, El Rusayris, Bakuri, Umm Darfa and Quneis in the Blue Nile State.
She added that 16 shops were also burned down.
The statement added that the state security authorities have imposed a curfew in the Rusairis area from 18:00 to 06:00 local time.
On Friday, clashes broke out between the two tribes in Sudan’s Geisan border region with Ethiopia, about 1,000 kilometers southeast of Khartoum, in which 14 people died and dozens were injured.
The Hausa tribal leader said, “We demanded that we have a local administration, and the Berti (tribes) refused it and persecuted us.”
For his part, the leader from Alberti replied that “civil administration is transferred to the owner of the land, and this is our land … So how do we transfer the administration of the Hausa.”
In a statement Friday, Sudan’s pro-democracy Central Committee of Doctors called on “medical cadres and medical workers (in the Blue Nile region) to respond quickly and fulfill their professional and moral duty despite the lack of resources.”
The Committee noted that “these unfortunate events took place against a backdrop of suspicious silence and media shutdown by the Blue Nile State government, and a complete failure to fulfill their legal duty, as well as moral and humanitarian obligations to citizens.”
Civil conflict resumed in the states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile in 2011. It affected about a million people after a long history of fighting from 1983 to 2005.
Source: AFP.