Sudan protester dies from wounds in Darfur clashes: medics

KHARTOUM: A Sudanese protester has died from injuries suffered in clashes between security forces and demonstrators from a camp for displaced people in conflict-wracked Darfur, medics said on Sunday.

Violence erupted Saturday when crowds of protesters from camp Attash clashed with soldiers and paramilitary forces in Nyala, the provincial capital of South Darfur state, the official SUNA news agency reported.

“One person died from injuries suffered in the abdomen during the dispersal of protesters in Nyala by security forces,” a doctors’ committee that is part of the protest campaign against the country’s military rulers said in a statement.

A medic from a hospital in Darfur where the protester had been treated confirmed his death. Deadly clashes have rocked Sudan since December when protests broke out against the iron-fisted rule of veteran leader Omar al-Bashir, who was ousted by the army on April 11.

Officials say at least 65 people have died in protest-related violence.On Saturday, SUNA reported that four members of the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Force had been “critically wounded” in clashes with protesters from camp Attash, and that there were no casualties among the demonstrators.

But the umbrella group leading the nationwide protests, the Alliance for Freedom and Change, gave a different version of Saturday’s events, condemning what it said was an attack by the army on protesters.

Darfur was torn by years of conflict that erupted in 2003 when ethnic minority rebels took up arms against Khartoum’s Arab-dominated government, accusing it of economic and political marginalisation.

The United Nations says about 300,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 and another 2.5 million people displaced in the western region.Bashir himself is wanted by the Hague-based International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes and genocide in Darfur, which he denies.