Army and police patrolled the streets of Khartoum on Wednesday, seeking to prevent a third day of riots as the United Nations said it will take part in an investigation into the death of popular leader John Garang in a helicopter crash, which sparked the violence.
President Omar al-Bashir went on national television to call for end to the violence, promising an investigation and vowing that the peace process — in which Garang was a crucial player — will forge ahead to produce a power-sharing government between northerners and southerners.
About 75 people were killed in the two days of riots in Khartoum, when looters — including Garang supporters angered by his death — attacked shops and cars, followed by reprisal violence between gangs of southerners and northerners.
Garang was the charismatic leader of rebels fighting in the most Christian and animist south for autonomy from the mainly Muslim Arab north for 21 years. On July 9, he became vice-president, second in power only to al-Bashir, under a landmark peace agreement ending the war.
He was killed over the weekend, when a helicopter bringing him home from a visit to Uganda crashed into a mountain range in southern Sudan in bad weather.
His widow, Rebecca, called for his supporters to halt any violence.
”We have to carry on with the goals set by John Garang,” she told reporters in New Site, the town in southern Sudan where Garang’s body is being kept ahead of his burial on Saturday. ”If you want us [his family] to be strong, you have to be strong, too.”
Al-Bashir echoed that call, saying ”the delicate circumstances that surround the peace process require us to be vigilant … to spare our nation any sedition and attempts to demolish what we have already built”.
Salva Kiir Maydarit, a veteran deputy of Garang, was named as his successor as head of Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
He will fly to Khartoum after the funeral on Saturday to be sworn in as vice-president in the national government, SPLM official Pagan Amum told the Sudan Vision newspaper
Two United States State Department officials arrived in New Site on Wednesday to confer with both northern and southern leaders to ”encourage them to maintain momentum on the comprehensive peace agreement and on Darfur”, spokesperson Tom Casey said.
Al-Bashir said a commission has been formed to work with Ugandan authorities to investigate the crash. The UN said on Wednesday it will help in the probe.
Jan Pronk, the UN special representative to Sudan, said it appears that the crash that killed Garang was an accident.
”There is no reason whatsoever to believe that something like sabotage has happened,” he told reporters.
Garang was flying in one of the Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni’s personal Russian-built Mi-72 helicopters as he returned from a private visit with Museveni, a long-time ally, on Saturday afternoon. After the flight disappeared, Ugandan and Sudanese forces launched a search of the border region, finding the crash site early on Monday in southern Sudan.
Leaders from north and south were eager to dispel any suspicion that the crash was part of a plot to kill Garang, which could cause the collapse of the peace agreement and even a return to civil war.
Garang’s fighters remain armed in the south and under the deal are supposed to be organised into a parallel force alongside the national military.
In Khartoum, army and police forces were out on Wednesday trying to prevent a third day of rioting. In the early afternoon, they evacuated all vehicles from the streets of central Khartoum, apparently fearing fresh clashes would erupt with the spread of a rumour — which turned out to be false — that a southern militia leader had been slain.
A deputy of Major General Paulino Matip, commander of the South Sudan Defence Forces, told state-run radio that there had been no attacks against him. Matip, a government ally and rival of Garang, leads a strong, well-trained militia, hundreds of whom are based in Khartoum. His death could have sparked fierce armed battles in the capital and beyond.
Outlying neighbourhoods of Khartoum that had been the site of arson, looting and beatings the day before were tense but calm on Wednesday due to a heavy presence of both military and police.
The two days of clashes in Khartoum sparked by Garang’s death began with a rampage on Monday by men believed to be SPLM supporters, some shouting that the government was to blame for Garang’s death.
On Tuesday, the violence turned sectarian and ethnic, pitting Muslim Arabs against Khartoum residents from the mostly Christian and animist south.
Dr Ogail Swardahab, director of the Khartoum morgue, told state radio that 75 people had died in the clashes. — Sapa-AP
AP correspondent Mohamed Osman contributed to this story from Khartoum