Daily Times

Nine people have been killed in fighting in Sudan’s western Darfur region between groups of Arab Rizeigat and the Fur people, the government said Thursday. Shooting broke out late Wednesday in Zalingei, state capital of Central Darfur, after a Fur member was killed, sparking wider fighting, witnesses said. Rizeigat gunmen on motorbikes stormed a camp for displaced people in the city attacking Fur residents, said Adam Regal, spokesman for the General Coordination for Refugees and Displaced in Darfur, a Sudanese independent aid group.

“The regrettable events have claimed the lives of nine people, and wounded others,” Central Darfur state government’s security committee said in a statement. A market was “completely burnt” in the clashes, it said, adding that the committee had held talks with the two sides in a bid to end fighting. Security forces have been dispatched to the area, it added. Fighting raged overnight until Thursday morning in the city, 1,020 kilometres (635 miles) west of the capital Khartoum. Ethnic clashes regularly erupt in Darfur, a troubled arid region awash with automatic weapons still reeling from the bitter civil war that erupted in 2003.

That conflict pitted ethnic minority rebels against the Arab-dominated government of then-president Omar al-Bashir. Some 300,000 people were killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations. While the conflict has subsided over the years, violence still flares between nomadic herders and settled farmers over shrinking access to scarce water and grazing land.