Bombing, pillaging in Kutum, North Darfur

Elements of the paramilitary Border Guards, backed by MiG fighter jets and Antonov aircrafts, on Sunday attacked the areas of Anka and Birdik in Kutum locality, North Darfur. Speaking to Radio Dabanga, multiple witnesses reported that a heavily armed force of Border Guards in about 70 armoured vehicles attacked the area of Anka at 12am on Sunday. The militiamen beat the people, pillaged houses and shops, and seized livestock. They took ten women and five young men with them. Another source from the area reported that an Antonov dropped two bombs on the area of Anka, and two on Amrai, leading to the death of a number of cattle. The witnesses said that the attackers then moved to the area of Birdik, where two MiG jets dropped four bombs. “Ibrahim Saad El Nur, a basic school student was killed. Others were wounded,” a witness who fled from Birdik said. “The Border Guards pillaged shops and houses, and stole our cattle.” The spokesman for the SAF, El Sawarmi Khaled Saad, told the pro-government Ashorooq TV on Wednesday that the Sudanese army plans intensive military operations in Darfur, Blue Nile and South Kordofan, “at all frontlines in the coming period to eliminate the insurgency by the end of the dry season campaign”. File photo: A burning house in a village southeast of Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, after attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, March 2014 (Darfur Relief and Documentation Centre)