Casualties as truck hits landmine in Sudan’s Blue Nile

An explosion on the road in Bau locality, Blue Nile state, reportedly caused the deaths of at least four truck passengers on Friday. A local human rights centre reported that a landmine caused the explosion.

The Blue Nile Centre for Human Rights said that the accident occurred while a sheikh and a group of people were on their way to “Deronk” village in Bau, travelling on the back of a truck. The sheikh, Sardarar Wad Abuk, of the Tigo chieftainship, and four others were killed when a landmine exploded underneath them. Six other people were injured, whom have been taken to the hospital in Ed Damazin.

One of the victims is in a critical condition, according to a medical source in Ed Damazin speaking to Radio Tamazuj. He reported that at least four people were killed.

The group traveled to Deronk to fetch local building materials for the construction of houses for displaced people currently living in the camp south of Ed Damazin, named Alashid Effendi, according to the Blue Nile Centre for Human Rights. Organisations have been denied access to the displaced people in the area by the authorities and the Sudanese Humanitarian Aid Commission, the human rights centre stressed. Subsequently, many are without tents or other kinds of shelter.

The Blue Nile human rights centre reported that the five dead are named Jedo Kumondan Osman, Mohamed Haroun Mulla, Abu Shouk Adok, Sheikh Sardarar Wad Abuk, and Walid Matar.

Early June, heavy fighting erupted in Bau locality between government forces and rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North. According to national NGOs in Blue Nile, a second wave of some 8,200 displaced from Bau locality to Ed Damazin and El Roseires localities took place on 24 June. With the movement of 16,300 people on 10 June, the total number of people who fled from Bau has reached an estimated 24,500 newly displaced.