South Darfur gunfight leaves 11 dead, 17 injured

At least 11 people were killed and 17 others wounded in a gunfight between cattle thieves and a search party not far from the town of Buram in South Darfur on Saturday.

Listener Masoud Saleh told Radio Dabanga from Buram that calm has returned to the area of En Nadeef where the clash between Salamat and Habbaniya tribesmen took place.

“Everything has returned to normal,” he said, explaining that the fighting was triggered by the theft of about 150 cows from Habbaniya herders by Salamat tribesmen.

The South Darfur police chief, Maj. Gen. Balla El Hussein, told reporters in the state capital of Nyala on Saturday that the search party found tracks of the stolen cows in the neighbourhood of a village near Buram. During a meeting with tribal leaders in the area, the members of the search party were shot. In the ensuing gunfight, 11 of the thieves were killed and 17 other people were injured.

The police chief strongly denied that the incident was of tribal nature. He added that the authorities immediately sent buffer troops who separated the two parties and contained the situation.