CAIRO (AP) — Hospitals in Sudan’s West Darfur province Tuesday received at least 29 more bodies, doctors said, bringing the tally from clashes between Arab and non-Arab tribes to some 160 dead, including women and children.
The violence in the province grew out of a fistfight Friday in a camp for displaced people in Genena, the provincial capital, and then escalated, lasting until Sunday.
The clashes subsided after authorities imposed a round-the-clock curfew across West Darfur and deployed more troops and security forces to the province.
The doctors’ committee in West Darfur said they counted at least 159 people dead from the clashes that also left over 200 others wounded.
It said at least 16 wounded were transferred to the capital Khartoum for treatment because of their critical conditions.
The clashes, between members of the Arab Rizeigat tribe and the non-Arab Massalit tribe, displaced at least 50,000 people, according to the United Nations.
The latest bout of violence in Darfur came two weeks after the U.N. Security Council ended the joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force’s mandate in the region.
Darfur remains scarred by war after a rebellion in the early 2000s was brutally suppressed.
The clashes pose a significant challenge to efforts by Sudan’s transitional government to end decades-long rebellions in some areas. The country is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocratic Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. A military-civilian government is now in power.
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