Rioting and tit-for-tat killings continued in Sudan's capital, Khartoum, on Wednesday, as southerners upset with the death of the rebel leader John Garang clashed with northern Arabs and government security forces struggling to restore order.
The death toll from three days of unrest in Khartoum and its suburbs approached 100, according to local authorities and relief agencies.
Mmarauding
There were reports of gangs of people, some carrying clubs, knives and guns, marauding through the streets, even well after a government-imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew.
The imam of a mosque outside of Khartoum was killed, the UN reported. Northern Muslims, crying "God is great!" in Arabic, were seen setting upon black African southerners.
The ugly scenes represented the worst fears after Garang's death on Saturday night in a helicopter crash, which authorities have insisted was an accident caused by foul weather, not an act of sabotage as some southerners claim.
Officials tried to soothe riled tempers in broadcasts urging Sudanese not to allow the collapse of the peace agreement between the Islamist government of the north and Garang's southern rebel movement.
Bury the strife
"I urge all the good people among you to bury the strife," President Omar al-Bashir said in an address over state television.
Garang's replacement as chairman of the rebel movement, Salva Kiir Mayardit, made a similar plea from the southern town of New Site, where he received a steady stream of international visitors making condolence calls.
"We want this situation to be stopped as soon as possible," said Kiir, calling the rioters "enemies of peace" who were tarnishing Garang's legacy.
The violence stood in marked contrast to the spirit of peace that seemed so prevalent in much of Sudan just days ago.
In January, a peace agreement that halted the two-decade civil war and made Garang vice president also brought hopes for a solution to the country's other long-running conflict, in the western Darfur region.
The upsurge in violence seemed to tear at those people involved in the long negotiations to quell the north-south war, which was the longest-running civil conflict in Africa.
`Ddr. John'
"To fail in Dr. John's vision is to fail Dr. John," Roger Winter, the US government's top envoy to Sudan said during a visit here, using Garang's nickname.
Garang was educated in the US and earned a doctorate in economics at Iowa State University in 1981.
An emotional Winter gave Garang's widow, Rebecca, a tight hug in the tent where she is mourning with relatives and friends.
Winter and Constance Newman, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, also embraced Kiir.
"He was special," Winter said of Garang, a man he first met in the late 1980s, well before the Sudanese rebel movement gained significant support in the US.
"We came to love each other in this manly way that comes when you have mutual respect and common vision," he added.
Uunraveling peace
The sudden death of such a significant American ally has raised worries in Washington, and not just because the outbreak of violence raised the possibility of the unraveling of the historic peace deal that Garang struck with Khartoum in January.
The Bush administration had long counted on Garang to play a key part in resolving another rebel insurgency, the crisis in Darfur.
With his death has come concerns that the Darfur conflict would slip down on the agenda, according to several diplomats who spoke without attribution to avoid stoking the tense situation.
In his new role, Kiir tried to address concerns about Darfur after a closed-door meeting with Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma of South Africa.
"There can be no peace in Sudan when there is fighting going on in Darfur and eastern Sudan," Kiir said, repeating one of Garang's frequent refrains.
"Our commitment is that guns must be silenced in the whole country," Kiir added.
At the same time, Kiir, who has spent most of his 54 years as a rebel, expressed clear sympathies with other Sudanese who have taken up arms against their government.
"People fight to address the grievances that are not being addressed on the table like the one we are sitting," he said.
"When you claim your rights and are not given them, you resort to violence as a way of expressing your discomfort," he added.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly
RSS