Sudan crimes: Khartoum, other cities see a surge in violence

The number of crimes in Khartoum and other Sudanese cities and towns has increased significantly this year. People attribute the surge in violent incidents to the growing poverty.

On Thursday, a shop owner In El Jereif West in Khartoum was killed when men on a motorcycle shot at him with a pistol. The reason for the attack is “entirely unclear,” a listener told Radio Dabanga.

In the industrial area in Khartoum North, a university student working as a rickshaw driver was killed last week. Yesterday, people expressed their satisfaction with the arrest of four people accused of killing the student.

Sudanese Congress Party members in Khartoum have called on the police to develop proactive security measures to contain the situation.

Kordofan

Two policemen were killed and a police officer was wounded in an attack by a group of about 150 people on the police station in Foga, El Nehoud locality in West Kordofan, on Wednesday.

The police said in a press statement on Thursday that the group stormed the police station after “two of their brothers” were detained for the possession of two Kalashnikov rifles. The attackers then raided the Foga market and the gold mills with the aim to plunder the places, but fled when government forces riding in 10 vehicles arrived.

In Abu Jubeiha in South Kordofan, farmer Suleiman Saleh was killed by cattle rustlers at his farm west of the town on Wednesday. “A group of armed bandits passed Saleh’s farm with a number of stolen cattle,” Hasan Khalil reported to Radio Dabanga. “They got the idea that he was phoning the police, and shot him dead.”

Osman Ali Yousef, Administrative director of North Kordofan state TV, was attacked by four gunmen in his house in Sheikan on Wednesday. An eyewitness reported that the attackers fled after their weapon failed, and neighbours arrived to Yousef's help. He said that the same group also attacked the house of another family in the same neighbourhood of Sheikan.

Darfur

Yesterday, Radio Dabanga reported the killing of a civil engineer and three soldiers from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in an armed robbery in Tullus in South Darfur on Tuesday.

In Central Darfur’s Nierteti, a farmer was murdered and her daughter and mother seriously injured in an attack by armed herders on their farm on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a joint force comprising regular Sudanese forces and contingents from the parties to the Juba Peace Agreement, was officially launched by Darfur Governor Minni Minawi in El Fasher, capital of North Darfur. This initial joint force will form the nucleus of a larger force designed to protect people in Sudan’s western region.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan reported earlier this month that more than 400 people were killed in armed attacks in the country between January and August this year. Darfur witnessed the bulk of the 40 intercommunal conflicts and armed attacks recorded. The rest of the violent incidents took place in the southern parts of the country.