‘Ethiopian gunmen attack farmers’: witness in eastern Sudan

A number of farmers and herdsmen were slain by gunmen in separate incidents in the border strip adjacent to Ethiopia this week.

Ethiopian gunmen launched the attacks on residents of Sudan's El Gedaref, a witness told this station.

“The bodies of five farmers, including Hamid Eisa, Abdelkarim, Yahya Sherbeik, Khalil, and Hamid were discovered two days after the killing,” the witness reported. “Two herders were killed in Wad Abu Lisan by Ethiopian Shifta militiamen.”

Three people were injured in separate attacks this week.

Residents are baffled by the government's silence about these attacks, the witness added.

Over the past few years, the violence between armed farmers in El Gedaref's border areas rapidly increased, with many reports of Ethiopian gangs attacking Sudanese farmers in the border areas, extorting them, and occupying their lands.

Radio Dabanga reported in November 2015 that more than 50 villages and a million acres of farmland in the eastern localities of El Gedaref state are occupied by Ethiopian militiamen.

At the end of last year, people in El Gedaref criticised the Sudanese government for failing to complete the demarcation of the border with Ethiopia, causing friction between Ethiopians and Sudanese over land issues.