Grenade blast kills gunman in North Darfur city

A man was killed when the grenade he carried detonated in downtown El Fasher city on Sunday night, in front of the security squad chasing him. Several security officers were wounded.

According to government sources in the capital of North Darfur, the man was being hunted down by the security service after he had fired live bullets in Abdelrahman El Rashid Park. The security force chased the gunman, who happened to be armed with a grenade. In his attempt to throw it at the security force, the grenade exploded in front of him and tore his body into pieces. The source said that the explosion led to the injury of several members of the security force, who were transferred to hospital.

The commissioner of El Fasher locality, El Tijani Abdallah Salih, told Sudanese media that the holding of weapons is banned in public areas. The security officers had asked the man in the park about his identity. “He said he belongs to the Military Intelligence but they doubted his credibility and decided to investigate him, but he refused and fired at them before fleeing,” said the commissioner.

Weapon collection

In August, the Sudanese government launched a large-scale campaign to disarm civilians and collect illegal weapons and vehicles in Darfur and states of Kordofan, as it said to improve the security and stability in these regions. The campaign, which has entered the stage of the compulsory collection of weapons by Sudanese military and security forces, finds support from the United States.

However the campaign is also expected to lead to new conflict and internal fighting between militias in Darfur. Ahmed Hussein Adam, associate researcher at the University of London School Of Law, explained that it is a strategy to rid the militias after exhausting their purposes, by igniting internal sedition and fueling conflict between its social cisterns. Adam referred to the need for the government to settle their dispute with Musa Hilal, head of the Revolutionary Awakening Council, and chief of the Mahameed clan.