14 dead in East Darfur ‘convoy attack’

14 people were killed in an armed robbery on a merchant convoy near Tortahan, East Darfur, yesterday. Merchants and consumers alike are struggling to make ends meet, as soaring prices and a scarcity of goods are ‘stagnating’ trade at the markets of East Darfur.

Listener Shamseldin Ahmed told Dabanga that five gunmen on board a vehicle “opened fire on the passengers of a trade convoy, killing 14 of them”.

A group of villagers managed to follow the vehicle and force it to stop, Ahmed said.

A video recording of Mousa Ishag, one of the passengers, detailing the assault, was shared by some users on social media. “We were attacked by about 20 gunmen. They beat us, took us to a different place, and then beat us again one by one.

“When the driver tried to resist the gunmen, they killed him. They also killed a woman carrying a small child, because she was trying to calm her baby down”, Ishag told viewers.

Yesterday, Darfur Governor Minni Minawi, and leader of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM-MM) faction, said on X he “received the shocking news of the death of a number of innocent people in the Tortahan area”, adding that the dead “were said to have been carrying SLM-MM member cards”.

East Darfur

A listener in Ed Daein, the capital of East Darfur, told Dabanga that traders and merchants in the state, and in the broader Darfur region, have become “more vulnerable to attacks by armed gangs, given the harsh conditions imposed by the ongoing war”.

East Darfur has been under the control of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since late November, after the SAF garrison defending the state fell to the paramilitary group.

Markets all over Darfur are “stagnant and paralysed”, according to the listener, who added that some merchants have stopped working completely due to the ongoing war, creating hardship for merchants and residents, who rely on the markets for their livelihoods and to obtain food and goods.

Prices of food, essential goods, fuel, and medicines have soared in East Darfur. During a tour of some of the markets in the state, Dabanga witnessed a decrease in market activity and a scarcity of goods.

A 50kg bag of sugar now costs SDG100,000, while a 25kg bag of flour reached SDG35,000. Market traders who spoke to Dabanga attributed the rise in prices to the high cost of transporting goods from eastern and northern Sudan, “including the costs of guard patrols, fuel prices, and the added travel length given the closure of several roads within Sudan, and the closure of the border crossing with South Sudan and Abyei”.