♦ This week’s news in brief ♦

A compact weekly digest of Dabanga Sudan's highlights of the news from Darfur and Sudan

♦ New cholera cases in Red Sea, 'but epidemic abating': Doctor

November 20 – 2017 SINGA One person died and reportedly 15 others were infected with cholera in Singa in Sudan’s Sennar state last week. The area, however, is seeing a general decrease in cases.

A medical source told Radio Dabanga that by Sunday, the isolation centre at Singa Hospital received about 15 cases from in and around Singa. He reported one death on Monday. The doctor confirmed a decrease in the number of cases in the past two months, compared to the beginning of the cholera outbreak which spread in eastern Sudan in August 2016.

In Red Sea state, a health source reported a week ago that there were nine cases of cholera being treated in the hospital in Tokar. He was concerned about the increasing number of incidents of the disease. “The environment is deteriorating terribly and the health care in the hospital is poor.”

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said ‘watery diarrhoea’ cases had significantly decreased in 18 states, although 20 infection cases and one death were reported in October. While the outbreak has been repeatedly tested positive for cholera, the Sudanese government, as well as international aid organisations, insist of referring to it as ‘watery diarrhoea’.

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the epidemic had dropped significantly from 30 average deaths per week in July to one as of October 29. WHO and the Ministry of Health reported more than 35,000 cases of acute watery diarrhoea in 18 states and the death of 800 people from August 2016 until September 2017.

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♦ Mother killed, daughter raped in farm in North Darfur

November 21 – 2017 TAWILA A woman was stabbed to death and her daughter raped in Tawila locality in North Darfur on Monday. Two armed men attacked Maryam Yagoub Suleiman and her 16-year-old daughter when they were willing their farm in Daba Naira, north of Tawila. “They attempted to rape the daughter,” said a relative of the two. “Maryam fought back, but the attackers stabbed her with a knife and killed her on the spot.” The attackers, two armed herders, subsequently raped the daughter at gunpoint. “She has been taken to El Fasher for treatment. We have filed a complaint to the police,” the relative reported to Radio Dabanga.

On 6 November, a young farmer was raped in Mershing locality in South Darfur. The 16-year-old girl was harvesting groundnuts when three militiamen assaulted her and raped her at gunpoint. Her brother reported the incident to this station and added that his sister was not examined by the doctors for a whole day.

Four girls were raped by gunmen in Tawila on 4 October, while they were out of their camp for displaced people to collect straw. The girls of 15 to 18 years old were raped at gunpoint, according to a camp elder. Doctors at the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Tawila treated the victims.

More news from Radio Dabanga:

Sudan weapon collectors arrest “dozens” of arms holders

November 21 – 2017 KUTUM / EL FASHER / TULLUS / SARAF OMRA Sudanese security service and paramilitaries enforcing the weapons collection campaign have arrested dozens of people, including omdas…

More haemorrhagic fever cases in eastern Sudan

November 19 – 2017 KASSALA Medical sources report an increasing incidence of haemorrhagic fever in Kassala in eastern Sudan. Three deaths were reported at Kassala hospital in early November, and doctors are frustrated by…

November 18 – 2017 AMSTERDAM Protestors and refugees scuffled with police in Amsterdam in the Netherlands on Friday, when Dutch police forcibly evicted 90 migrants, including 17 Sudanese nationals, from an empty office building…
 

November 17 – 2017 ZALINGEI In a shift from the general rejection of the search for weapons in camps for displaced people on the presence of illegally held weapons, displaced people have started to welcome the inspection campaign. A search in…
 

November 17 – 2017 KHARTOUM The Sudanese Pound has continued its plunge against the U.S. Dollar, marking a historic rate of SDG28 in the black market on Thursday. Economic experts repeatedly said that the Bank of Sudan indirectly floats…
 

November 16 – 2017 KHARTOUM Sudan President Al Bashir has said that the atrocities that have accompanied the civil war in South Sudan since December 2013 should have put the leaders of the newly-born state under the jurisdiction of the…

Journalists detained at Khartoum vigil against Sudan’s new press amendments

November 16 – 2017 KHARTOUM Newspaper journalists Shamail El Nur from El Tayyar and Mohammed Mustafa from Alwan were detained by agents of the National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS) as dozens of journalists gathered for a vigil…
 

November 16 – 2017 EL FASHER The security authorities in North Darfur announced on Wednesday that kidnapped Swiss aid worker Margaret Schenkel has been “released from her captors in a mountainous area during a professional security…
 

November 16 – 2017 ZAMZAM CAMP The announcement by the World Food Programme (WFP) in Sudan of a switch to a National Number-based electronic ration card effective 11 December, has met with sharp criticism by leaders of the Darfur displaced who…
 

November 15 – 2017 NEW YORK UN-backed peacekeepers have lost enough guns and ammunition in sub-Saharan Africa over the past two decades to arm an army, according to a study by the Small Arms Survey…