The death toll from days of tribal clashes in Sudan’s Blue Nile state has risen to at least 65, the state’s health minister said. Fighting between the Hausa and Birta ethnic groups in the southern province has also injured about 150 others, Gamal Nasser al-Sayed said on Sunday. He told The Associated Press that most of the dead were young men who had been shot or stabbed. Al-Sayed urged authorities in the capital Khartoum to help airlift 15 seriously injured, as hospitals in Blue Nile lack advanced equipment and life-saving drugs. On Saturday, officials had said the death toll was at least 31. Authorities have deployed the military and paramilitary Rapid Support Force — or RSF — to bring stability to the region. They also imposed a night-time curfew from Saturday night and banned gatherings in the towns of Roseires and Al-Damazin, the state capital, where the clashes took place. Blue Nile governor Ahmed al-Omda had issued a decree on Friday banning any gatherings or marches for a month. Ahmed Youssef, a resident of Al-Damazin, told AFP news agency that “dozens of families” crossed the bridge into the city on Saturday to escape the unrest. Hospitals had issued urgent appeals for blood donation, according to medical sources. A source at Al-Roseires hospital told AFP the facility had “run out of first aid equipment” and that reinforcements were needed as the number of injured “increases”. UN Special Representative for Sudan Volker Perthes called on all sides to show restraint. The inter-communal violence and loss of life in the Blue Nile region of Sudan is sad and deeply disturbing. I urge local communities to exercise restraint, refrain from retaliation and work with local and regional authorities on concrete steps towards peaceful coexistence. — Volker Perthes (@volkerperthes) July 16, 2022 The violence occurred after the Birta tribe rejected a Hausa demand to create a “civil authority to oversee access to land”, a prominent Hausa member told AFP on condition of anonymity. But a senior Birta member had said the tribe was responding to a “trespass” on its lands by the Hausa. Qissan region and Blue Nile state more generally have long been in turmoil, with southern militants a thorn in the side of Sudan’s former strongman President Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the military in 2019 after street protests. Experts say last year’s coup, led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, has created a security vacuum that has encouraged a resurgence of sectarian violence in a country where deadly clashes regularly erupt over land, livestock, access to water and pasture. Pro-democracy protesters accuse Sudan’s military leadership and former rebel leaders who signed a 2020 peace deal of stoking ethnic tensions in Blue Nile state for personal gain. On Sunday, police fired tear gas in Sudan’s capital Khartoum against hundreds of anti-coup protesters, who also drew attention to deadly clashes in the country’s south. The capital has been the scene of almost weekly protests since Al Burhan’s rule derailed the transition to civilian rule. “Al-Damazin is bleeding,” read the placard of one of Khartoum’s protesters on Sunday. In the town of Wad Madani, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) south of Khartoum, protesters diverted their demonstration to the local hospital to “give blood to our brothers who were injured in the tribal clashes in Blue Nile,” a protest organizer told AFP. Ammar Mohamed.
