Khartoum, June 20: Fifty people were killed as rival tribes clashed for the third time this month in the Darfur region of western Sudan, a tribal chief said on Saturday.
“Members of the Rezeigat tribe riding in nine vehicles … attacked three of our villages on Friday,” Ezzedine Eissa al-Mandil of the rival Misseriya tribe said.
He said the attackers came in cars that belonged to the Frontier Guards, a paramilitary force.
“The engagements started at midday and continued until sunset,” he said, adding that the clashes took place in the Garsila sector, south of the town of Zalingei in West Darfur.
“We counted a total of 50 dead,” he said, without giving a breakdown between the tribes.
There was no immediate confirmation from the Rezeigat tribe, but Jaafar Abdelhakim Ishaq Adam, governor of West Darfur, confirmed that at least 17 people were wounded.
“We deployed men in the sector in order to separate the belligerents. We do not know for the moment the number killed, but there are 17 wounded who were transported to the hospital,” the governor said.
Chris Cycmanick, spokesman of the joint UN-African Union peacekeeping force UNAMID, said unconfirmed reports from local inhabitants had put the toll at 40 dead and 10 wounded.
He said 40 peacekeepers had been dispatched to the area, but had been unable to reach the site where the clashes took place.
“The population informed our soldiers of continued fighting. According to residents, the fighting left up to 40 dead and 10 wounded, but this information is not confirmed,” Cycmanick said.
The two tribes have been at war since a Sudanese army soldier from the Misseriya tribe was killed in an ambush last February that the tribesmen blamed on the Nuwaybas, a sub-tribe of the Rezeigat.
The Misseriya had demanded financial compensation for the death.
More than 100 people have been killed in clashes over the past two weeks between the rival tribes, according to tribal sources.
At least 20 people died and an unspecified number were wounded last Tuesday, and another 41 were killed earlier this month, according to tribal and other sources.
According to Mandil, the Misseriya and Rezeigat tribes launched reconciliation talks on June 3 but the former boycotted the negotiations on Tuesday because of the renewed fighting.
Clashes in Darfur cost almost 600 lives in May, the highest monthly death toll since peacekeepers were deployed in 2008, according to a UN-African Union document.
The Darfur conflict erupted in February 2003, when rebels took up arms against the government in Khartoum and its allies.
Over the years, the rebels have fractured into multiple movements, fraying rebel groups, banditry, flip-flopping militias and the war has widened into overlapping tribal conflicts.
The United Nations says up to 300,000 people have died from the combined effects of war, famine and disease and more than 2.7 million fled their homes.
Many of the rebels enjoy direct and indirect foreign support that helped fuel the conflict.
—Agencies