Bashir offers Eid prayers in Kurmuk

Asks citizens who fled to neighboring Ethiopia since outbreak of Blue Nile conflict to return homeThe Sudanese president Omar Al Bashir offered prayers in the city of Kurmuk on the occasion of Eid Al Adha on Sunday, as promised earlier.The Sudanese armed forces recently gained control of Kurmuk, a city in Blue Nile state bordering with Ethiopia, after a battle with the opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N).Sudanese armed forces and the SPLM-N have been engaged in conflict in Blue Nile state since September 1.During the prayer ceremony, Bashir announced the formation of a higher committee for rebuilding and reconstruction of Kurmuk. He also appealed to citizens, who have fled Kurmuk to neighboring Ethiopia since the beginning of the conflict, to return to their homes.Bashir described the SPLM-N as cockroaches and asked the army to get rid of the few who were still infesting some areas of Blue Nile state. He also ordered the military to arrest the former Blue Nile governor and SPLM-N leader Malik Aggar.“He should be arrested and tried in court by sharia law. He betrayed the sharia,” Bashir said about Aggar.SPLM-N dismisses Bashir’s statementsThe SPLM-N, however, scoffed at Bashir’s statements and said that he had not learned any lessons from his past mistakes.“He is repeating the same inappropriate statements that he made during the war with the South. He is causing the war in Blue Nile to spill over Darfur,” Yasir Arman, secretary general of the SPLM-N said in an interview with Radio Dabanga.In response to Bashir’s statements following the Eid prayer in Kurmuk he said, “He is not offering prayers in Jerusalem while preaching to the Sudanese in Sudan. He is offering prayers over corpses of Muslims who were killed in Kurmuk.” Arman added that the loss of Kurmuk doesn’t spell the end of the war.