Reuters MOHAMED NURELDIN ABDALLAH
Elements of the Sudanese Armed Forces.
On Sunday evening, the Sudanese authorities announced that 15 people were killed as a result of renewed armed tribal clashes in the city of Gereida in South Darfur, which prompted the government to send military forces to the region.
The governor of South Darfur, Musa Mahdi, told the official SUNA agency during a visit to Gereida that the state security committee held an emergency meeting with military and local leaders to discuss developments in the situation after the escalation of the armed confrontation between the Masalit and Fallata tribes, where it stressed the need to take Security and legal measures to protect civilians and prosecute the perpetrators.
Mahdi said that the meeting of the Security Committee “came out with decisions, the most important of which is the deployment of military forces in large numbers to carry out the task of arresting those involved and collecting weapons, in addition to forming an investigation committee headed by the Deputy Police Director, which started its work and stopped all those who participated, masterminded or caused the events, and brought them to the courts.”
Mahdi called on citizens to help the committee by providing information and evidence, adding: “The era of reconciliation conferences has ended and the era of law enforcement has come.”
SUNA quoted Omar al-Malik, one of the local leaders in Gereida, that verbal altercations between members of the two tribes over a source of water developed into clashes with firearms that killed two people immediately, and as a result groups of Fallata attacked the city, killing 13 of them. Masalit children and 34 wounded were taken to hospital.
On the other hand, one of the leaders of the Native Administration of the Fallatah tribe, Jaafar Issa, pointed out that the Masalit sons attacked the Fallatah shepherds in the water sources, Rahad Abu Drees, and wounded two people who later died of their wounds.
Jaafar told SUNA that the failure to follow up on the implementation of the reconciliation decisions, which was concluded between the two parties in Nyala last October, is one of the reasons for the renewed conflict.
Earlier, the Gereida area in South Darfur state witnessed 7 bloody incidents between the two tribes, which left large numbers of dead and wounded during the past two years.
Source: “Sona”
