New settlers assault, drive-off East Darfur returnees

Two displaced people who returned to Areit village in Asalaya locality in East Darfur were injured and forcibly returned in an attack by new settlers who refused to accept their return to their area of origin on Sunday.

Sheikhs from camp Neem in Ed Daein told Radio Dabanga that 400 displaced people returned to the village on Sunday according to voluntary repatriation programmes, but the settlers in the village refused their return, assaulted them and injured Adam Yousef and Ahmad Omar Adam who were taken to the state capital Ed Daein for treatment.

The sheikhs said that the displaced returned to camp Neem on Monday morning on the orders of the locality commissioner, Hamdan Adam El Bushra, so as to prevent further violence and clashes.

The camp sheikhs stressed their attachment to their land, and appealed to the government authorities to extend the prestige of the state, provide services in the villages where they had been displaced from, as well as the removal of agricultural lands from the settlers and returning them to the indigenous people.