Dozens of families were fleeing violence in Sudan’s Blue Nile state, where ongoing clashes between two ethnic communities have killed at least 33 people, authorities said on Saturday.
At least 108 people had been injured and 16 shops torched since the violence broke out on Monday over a land dispute between the Berti and Hawsa communities, the Sudanese Ministry of Health said in a statement.
“We need more troops to control the situation,” Adel Agar, a local official from Al-Roseires city, told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Many people were seeking refuge in police stations, he said, adding that the unrest had resulted in many “dead and wounded.”
Agar did not give a toll breakdown, but said mediators were urgently needed to de-escalate the violence.
Soldiers were deployed to contain the situation, and a night curfew was imposed on Saturday.
Blue Nile Governor Ahmed al-Omda on Friday issued an order prohibiting any gatherings or marches for one month.
ACCESS TO LAND
The violence broke out after Berti leaders rejected a Hawsa request to create a “civil authority to supervise access to land,” a prominent Hawsa member told AFP on condition of anonymity.
However, a senior member of the Berti community said it was responding to a “violation” of its lands by the Hawsas.
Clashes resumed on Saturday after a brief lull, close to the state capital of Al-Damazin, witnesses said.
“We heard gun shots ... and saw smoke rising,” Fatima Hamad, a local resident, told AFP from Al-Roseires, across the river from Al-Damazin.
Ahmed Youssef, a resident of the state capital, said “dozens of families” crossed the bridge into the city to flee the unrest.
Hospitals put out urgent calls for blood donations, medical sources said.
One source at Al-Roseires Hospital told reporters that the facility had “run out of first aid equipment” and that reinforcements were needed as the number of injured people was “rising.”
UN Special Representative for Sudan Volker Perthes called on all sides to exercise restraint.
The “inter-communal violence and the loss of life in Sudan’s Blue Nile region is saddening and deeply concerning,” he wrote on Twitter.
‘SITUATION IMPROVED’
By late afternoon on Saturday “the situation had improved” in the Qissan region, while clashes continued in Al-Roseires, al-Omda said in televised remarks.
The Qissan region, and the Blue Nile state in general, have long seen unrest, with southern guerrillas a thorn in the side of former Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir, who was in 2019 ousted by the country’s military following street pressure.
Experts say last year’s coup, led by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, who chairs the Sudanese Transitional Sovereignty Council, created a security vacuum that has fostered a resurgence in violence between communities in a country where deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock, access to water and grazing.
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