Sudanese student dies in Syria suicide blast

One of the medical students, who left Khartoum to join the fighters of the Islamic State (IS) in Syria in March, blew himself up in a suicide bombing in Raqqa on Sunday, the third day of Eid El Fitr.

Mustafa Osman Figeiri was one of the first group of Sudanese students who travelled to Syria, initially to work in a medical team of the IS (called 'Ed Daesh' in Arabic).

A British national, he studied pharmacy at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology in Khartoum, a private university established by the Khartoum state Minister of Health.

Sources say that Figeiri met with Islamic extremists in 2013 at the Abdallah Bin Ruwaha mosque in Khartoum, known to be a meeting place for jihadists. They often ‘disappear’ not long after recruitment.

Shortly after Figeiri disappeared, he contacted a fellow student in Khartoum via social media. He said that he had joined Ed Daesh in Mali. He returned to Khartoum after seven months, and left again in March, reportedly together with ten other students, to join IS in Syria.

According to the same sources, before dying in the attack, Figeiri had become responsible for the IS pharmacies in Raqqa.

In June, another group of at least 18 students of the University of Medical Sciences and Technology secretly left Khartoum for Turkey to join the IS in Syria or Iraq. They included the daughter of the spokesman for the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ali El Sadig.

According to El Sadig, senior government officials must have been involved in their travel, as his daughter had no exit stamp as is needed for Sudanese citizens to leave the country. Nor did she have a visa for Turkey or any other country. She was not checked by customs and immigration officers prior to boarding the aircraft.