KHARTOUM, 8 July 2004 — Fighting between Arab and African tribes has killed at least 70 people and displaced thousands more this week in the Darfur region of western Sudan, a member of Parliament for the area said yesterday.
Khalil Ahmed Abdullah told Reuters the clashes had escalated from a dispute between individuals to a tribal conflict which had displaced 35,000 people from an area in the south of Darfur over the past four days.
“Only 14,000 of them have been accounted for. We don’t know where the others are,” Abdullah said in Khartoum. Abdullah said the clashes did not involve Darfur rebels and Arab militia, known as Janjaweed, who the rebels say have conducted a campaign of ethnic cleansing in the area with government backing. Khartoum denies the accusation.
Sudanese security forces had brought fighting under control in one of four areas of violence, 76 kilometers southeast of Nyala, the capital of Southern Darfur state, Abdullah said. Leaders from the Arab Rizeigat tribe and African Burgo tribe had arrived to mediate.
A UN official in Sudan was not able to verify the number of dead or displaced. “The last that we heard from there was that the situation had calmed down,” the official said. A UN security team was assessing whether it was necessary to withdraw UN staff from the area, the official added.
Meanwhile, Sudan has charged 36 members of an opposition party accused of involvement in a coup attempt, the head of the investigating committee said late on Tuesday.
Dozens of members of the Popular Congress party were detained earlier this year and the party leader was accused of funding rebels in the Darfur area, scene of what the United Nations has said is the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
