Sudanese NGO manager, army soldier killed in South Kordofan

The manager of the Islamic Daawa organisation in South Kordofan was shot dead by unknown gunmen in the state capital of Kadugli on Sunday. In a separate incident that day, an army soldier died of his bullet wounds.

According to a press statement by the Kampala-based Sudanese Human Rights and Democracy Organisation (HUDO) on Wednesday, Ismail Idris (54), manager of the Islamic Daawa organisation in South Kordofan, was shot dead by two masked men for an unknown reason.

In the evening of March 15, Idris returned home in Kadugli. When he got out from his car, two masked men called him by his name, and shot him in the chest.

Relatives and neighbours rushed to take him to a hospital but he died before arriving.

A case was filed at the Kadugli police office, and the police visited the crime scene, HUDO states. No further investigations or arrests have been done yet.

On the same evening, a member of the Sudan Armed Forces was killed in Kadugli as well.  

Fathi Sherif (27) was fatally shot by an unknown person when he was on his way home. The army soldier wore civilian clothes, HUDO reported in a separate statement today.

According to medics at the Kadugli Teaching Hospital, he was hit by five bullets in his chest and abdomen.

The Sudanese human rights organisation expressed its concerns about “the situation of civilians in conflict areas”, and called upon the Sudanese government “at state and central level” to urgently tackle the rampant insecurity in South Kordofan’s Nuba Mountains, to ensure that police executes their duties responsibly, and to dissolve the Popular Defence Forces militia and disarm its members.

In end February, residents of the eastern part of the Nuba Mountains called on the state government to disarm the militiamen belonging to the Popular Defence Forces deployed in the region. The commercial and agricultural activities in the region are threatened by the proliferation of weapons, and the frequent occurrence of killings and robberies on the roads, they said.

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