Farmer killed, two gold miners robbed in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains

Last month, a farmer was found dead in Lagawa, West Kordofan. In Talodi, South Kordofan, two gold miners were wounded in an armed robbery.

On September 23, Ibrahim Hamad (40) went as usual to his farm near the Lagawa military base. When he did not come back home in the evening, his relatives and neighbours went to the farm in search of his whereabouts.

They found him dead with gunshot wounds in his head and his chest, the Sudanese Human Rights and Development Organisation (HUDO) reported on Monday. They took the body to the hospital for a post mortem and buried him.

The murder was reported to the police of Lagawa town, who did not move to investigate the incident, HUDO stated.

Five days later, on September 28, Yousef Redwan (48) and El Tayeb Khartoum (40) were riding on a motorcycle from the El Ganaya gold mine to the El Tugoula gold mine in Talodi, when an armed man intercepted them “and immediately shot at them”.

Redwan was hit in the abdomen and Khartoum in his right leg, HUDO said in a statement on Tuesday. The assailant then robbed them of their motorcycle, their smart phones and their money.

The two men were taken to Talodi Hospital by others who found them along the road. The following day, Redwan was taken by his family to the much better equipped El Obeid Teaching Hospital in North Kordofan, located 350 kilometres from Talodi, because his health worsened.

Relatives of the victims reported the case to the police of Talodi police, who said they could not visit the crime scene because they did not have fuel.

HUDO Centre expressed its concerns about the unsafe situation in the Nuba Mountains*, and called upon the Sudanese government to urgently address the causes of insecurity in the region, ensure that the police observe the Rule of Law, and do their duties, dissolve the government militias in the region, and disarm people with unlicensed firearms.

* The Nuba Mountains is an area of hills located in South Kordofan and the eastern part of West Kordofan. The area is home to a number of indigenous ethnic African groups collectively known as Nuba. West Kordofan is also populated by Arab herders called Baggara (Misseriya), who were supported by the then ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of President Omar Al Bashir in Khartoum.

In August 2005, West Kordofan state was abolished and its territory divided between North and South Kordofan. This was done in implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, signed in January that year by the Sudanese government and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) under the leadership of the late John Garang.

West Kordofan was re-established by the Al Bashir regime in July 2013, two years after a civil war erupted again in the Nuba Mountains. The move was welcomed by the Baggara.