Fearful residents fled the centre of Khartoum on Wednesday as armed gangs roamed the streets in a third day of violence that threatened to undermine Sudan’s tenuous north-south peace deal struck six months ago.
Omar al-Bashir, the President, and Salva Kiir Mayardit, the newly appointed leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement, the former rebels, called for calm to prevent the revival of a 20-year civil war.
The latest violence, which has claimed at least 100 lives, most in the capital, flared after the leader of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, John Garang, died in a helicopter crash at the weekend.
The crash, which came just three weeks after Garang was sworn in as Sudan’s vice-president under the peace settlement, has aroused suspicions, particularly among his supporters in the south.
On Wednesday, the southern town of Juba also saw violence, as Arab northerners were hounded out of town by rampaging locals. Aid workers said at least 18 people had been killed in the area during the past two days. A further 84 have died in the Khartoum violence.
”Peace is being jeopardised in the short run,” said the top United Nations envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk.
Southerners fear Garang’s death could weaken their hand in the post civil-war settlement. Without his charismatic leadership, power struggles in the south could break out. The country is divided, the north being Arabic and Muslim, the south a mix of African ethnicities with Christians, animists and Muslims. The division is further complicated by the strife in the western Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed and about two million people forced from their homes.
Wednesday’s violence, which began in the capital’s suburbs, spread to the centre after rumours that a southern militia leader had been killed. The leader later appeared on television to deny the story.
Streets were full of cars heading out of the city centre, and five trucks of soldiers and riot police drove into the central residential and commercial area, according to witnesses said. They said gunshots had been heard and teargas had been fired.
President Bashir, appearing on national television on Wednesday, promised an investigation into the crash and vowed that the peace process, in which Garang had been a crucial player, would forge ahead to produce a power-sharing government of northerners and southerners. ”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,” he said.
He added that a commission had been formed to work with the Ugandan authorities (which had provided the helicopter that crashed) to investigate what happened. The UN also said it would help.
Kiir, hastily installed as Garang’s successor, echoed the president’s call for calm in the southern settlement of New Site, where he met US and South African envoys aiming to save the fragile peace pact: ”Enemies of peace may want to take opportunity of this situation. We are appealing to all the Sudanese people to refrain from hostility.”
William Ezekiel, the editor of the daily Khartoum Monitor, said residents reported that 47 people had been killed overnight in the suburb of Mamoura, and 15 in Kalakla district. Groups of up to 10 men carrying sticks, knives and rifles had been patrolling during the night. ”They were shouting ‘God is great, God is great’ and saying they were fighting the non-believers.”
The trouble in Khartoum started on Monday when angry southerners took to the streets and started looting after the announcement of Garang’s death. Some northerners responded by forming vigilante groups, which have continued to roam the streets despite a curfew.
The north-south conflict began in 1983 when the Khartoum government tried to impose Islamic law. Two million people were killed, mainly by hunger and disease.
The peace deal signed in January included giving southerners the right to vote on secession after a six-year interim period, and sharing Sudan’s oil wealth roughly equally between the northern and southern areas. – Guardian Unlimited Â