Violence in North and West Darfur

North and West Darfur witnessed various violent incidents in the past week. In North Darfur a police assistant was attacked whilst a policeman threatened hospital staff and had to be disarmed by visitors. In West Darfur’s Kereinik, a man was killed.

Police assistant Abdelrahman Idris, member of the North Darfur anti-smuggling forces in the state’s capital El Fasher, was wounded in an attack by unknown gunmen on Tuesday evening. He was shot in his back and hand.

Listeners told Radio Dabanga from El Fasher that the gunmen looted the policeman's vehicle after shooting him. The perpetrators were tracked down by a joint force.

Policeman threatens hospital staff

In North Darfur’s Saraf Omra Hospital, a policeman pointed his Kalashnikov at the accounting staff on Wednesday.

Eyewitnesses told Radio Dabanga that visitors in the hospital managed to disarm him and took the weapon from his hand.

They explained that the events developed over a conflict over the payment of the transaction fees on Tuesday, and he returned the following day to conduct the transaction by force of arms.

On the road between Saraf Omra and Butinei, also in North Darfur, three armed men robbed Salaheldin Adam Salem of his rickshaw at gunpoint.

Salem told Radio Dabanga that his relatives formed a search posse which followed the perpetrators and was able to recover the rickshaw. The perpetrators fled.

West Darfur murder

Ibrahim Yousef (42) was killed in Kereinik, West Darfur, on Monday evening. People from the area told Radio Dabanga that four armed men on horses shot Yousef, who died instantly.

West Darfur has been witnessing a continuation of insecurity for a long time.

The governor of West Darfur, Khamis Abdallah Abakar said in a press statement in the state capital El Geneina on Tuesday that the widespread attacks on Kereinik in the end of last year and early this year have a political and economic dimension, not a tribal one.

According to Abakar, a “third party is fuelling the fighting in the state” as he explained that there has been no change in West Darfur since the fall of Omar Al Bashir.

Kereinik formed the stage of violent attacks at the end of last month, which led to the death of more than 200 people and the injury of at least 136 others. More than one hundred thousand were displaced as a result of the violence and the Higher Committee to Stop the Massacres in West Darfur called the attacks a ‘genocide’.