Herder killed, two others injured in eastern Sudan

In a gunfight between herdsmen and paramilitaries of the Central Reserve Police in Sennar on Sunday, a herder was shot dead and two others sustained serious bullet wounds.

A relative of one of the victims told Radio Dabanga that members of the Central Reserve Police (popularly known as Abu Tira) are guarding the agricultural projects in the area of Kokary in Abu Houjar locality.

“We were grazing our livestock on fallow land in Kokary when Abu Tira forces riding in four vehicles mounted with Dushka machineguns, stormed the place,” he said. “They began shooting immediately. Yousef Malik was fatally hit. Attaelmanan Yousef Yagoub and El Sammani Abdelrahman El Fadel were seriously injured.”

He said that the situation in the area is tense. “We refused to take the body of Malik from the Sinja Hospital morgue in protest against the incident.”

The source accused “senior state authorities and agricultural project owners” of being behind the attack, saying that they intend to prevent nomadic herders who returned from South Sudan to resettle in the area. “For this reason, they detained ten herdsmen, including sheikhs, in the area two weeks ago.”

After the secession of South Sudan in July 2011, Sudanese nomadic herders returned to the north with their livestock. President Omar Al Bashir issued a decree, granting permission to the herdsmen to migrate their cattle into Sudan and allow grazing in a number of areas. However, the decree has not been implemented by local governments, which causes tension between arriving herders and the local authorities every year.