The new toll for the land dispute between two rival tribes in Sudan’s eastern Blue Nile state has been revised to 31 dead, dozens injured and 16 shops burned down, authorities said. The Hausa and Barti tribes have been clashing since Monday (July 11) in the district of Qissan over the possession of certain lands and the formation of a joint civil authority to oversee the issue, according to local sources quoted by Agence France-Presse.
Blue Nile State, bordering Ethiopia, is one of the remote regions of Sudan. After the October 25 coup, the security vacuum favored a resurgence of old conflictsincluding land disputes.
In this case, the Sudanese tribe of the Haoussas is demanding the formation of a civil authority to supervise access to land, which the Bartis refuse. The latter claim, on the contrary, full possession of this territory.
These rivalries sparked armed clashes this week that lasted five days. It took the deployment of troops to put an end to it, and the governor issued an order banning all gatherings or parades for a month. In addition, a night curfew was imposed from Saturday evening.
This very deadly local conflict is reminiscent of the violence that regularly mourn Darfur for more than twenty years, and where rivalries for control of land and pasture have rekindled similar violence recently. In the locality of Kulbus in April, a dispute over a plot degenerated and left at least 130 dead among the Riziegat and Gimr tribes.
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