KHARTOUM, July 7 (Reuters) – A prominent Sudanese
pro-government militia leader wanted for war crimes by the
International Criminal Court was wounded during clashes in the
biggest city in the strife-torn Darfur region on Sunday,
officials and witnesses said.
Western powers are worried about an upsurge in violence and
instability in the vast western region at a time when Islamic
militants roam porous sub-Saharan borders and fight French
troops in Mali.
Residents said gunfire erupted in Nyala, capital of South
Darfur state and Sudan’s second-largest city. Armed men, some
dressed in paramilitary police uniform, started firing at each
other and looted the central market, they said.
Police said gunmen shot at Muhammad Ali Abdel-Rahman, an
Arab militia leader known as Ali Kushayb, state radio said. He
is being treated in a hospital, officials told the al-Shorouq TV
channel, blaming the gunfire on an individual argument.
Abdel-Rahman’s presence will enrage human rights groups who
say Sudan has failed to disarm Arab militias it unleashed in
2003 to crush an uprising by African tribes against the Arab
government which they accuse of marginalisation.
Abdel-Rahman was charged with war crimes in Darfur by the
ICC in 2007. Prosecutors said he commanded thousands of militia
fighters and personally led attacks on towns and villages.
Under a 2011 peace deal signed between Sudan and two smaller
rebel groups, Sudan would have been obliged to disarm militias.
Last month, Human Rights Watch said Abdel-Rahman, who is
now a member of a paramilitary police unit, took part in a raid
on a rival tribe in South Darfur in April.
Violence in Darfur has ebbed from 2004 peaks but fighting
has picked up again between the army, rebels and rival tribes,
displacing some 300,000 people since January.
Clashes had been so far confined to rural areas but a
gunfight erupted in Nyala between rival security forces on
Thursday, killing two Sudanese aid workers when a grenade hit an
aid group office.
The ICC has also issued arrest warrants for President Omar
Hassan al-Bashir and other senior officials, accusing them of
orchestrating war crimes. The Khartoum government has refused to
deal with the ICC, dismissing it a Western plot.
(Reporting by Khalid Abdelaziz; Writing by Ulf Laessing;
Editing by Ralph Boulton)
