‘Clashes kill 48 people’ in Sudan’s Darfur region
CLASHES between different ethnic groups in Sudan's West Darfur state have left 48 people dead, Sudan's news agency says quoting the doctors' union.
The fighting in the state capital, El Geneina, began on Saturday after a row in which a man was stabbed to death.
A state-wide curfew has been imposed and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok has sent a delegation to investigate.
A conflict in Darfur that began in 2003 forced millions to flee and, despite a peace process, tensions remain.
Saturday's violence comes less than three weeks after peacekeepers from the United Nations and African Union handed over security to the Khartoum authorities after 13 years there, reports the BBC's Youssef Taha.
Similar clashes in El Geneina last year, which saw Arab pastoralists fight with non-Arab groups, caused hundreds of casualties.
The most recent fighting, which also left nearly 100 injured, was centred around
a camp for people who had been displaced by the Darfur conflict. A deadly row between two men escalated into a fight involving armed militias, the AFP news agency reports.
A peace deal involving most, but not all, groups in Darfur was signed last year.
The Darfur conflict began under the presidency of Omar al-Bashir, who was overthrown in 2019 and is wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and genocide in the region.
Justice for the people of Darfur was a key rallying cry for civilian groups who backed the ouster of the president after nearly three decades in power.
The Sudanese Professionals’ Association, which was at the forefront of the anti-Bashir movement, called for the current transitional government to deal with the “unruly armed groups which have been freely moving and terrorising civilians since the collapse of the former regime”, Sudan’s news agency reports.