Eastern Sudan peace: Police station plans underway

In eastern Sudan’s Kassala, preparations are underway to establish a police station at the border between the Kadugli and El Gadisiya neighbourhoods in the town.

The Kadugli district is populated by people from the Nuba Mountains, who fled the war in South Kordofan in search of work on farmlands in eastern Sudan, while members of the eastern Sudanese Beni Amer ethnic group are living in the neighbouring El Gadisiya district.

The representative of the Nuba, Kheirallah Mohamed, said that they identified the houses of which the residents will be moved to other places to make room for the police station. The people will be fully compensated for the loss of their homes, and offered alternatives.

Abdelaziz Hamed, representative of the Beni Amer in Kassala, welcomed the plans for a police station between the two neighbourhoods. He explained to reporters in Kassala yesterday that the step was stipulated in the reconciliation agreement. Leaders of the Beni Amer and Nuba signed the reconciliation peace accord in eastern Sudan's Kassala, in the presence of Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok, in March last year.

In the past two years, fighting between the two communities has erupted more than once in Kassala and the Red Sea state capital Port Sudan. Reconciliation agreements signed by leaders of both groups could not prevent new violence. In May, clashes in Kassala between Nuba and Beni Amer people left eight dead and more than 80 injured.