Kalokiting/Golol/Tawila/Nierteti, March 8, 2016 (SSNA) — More than ten people were killed in Darfur’s Jebel Marra as of Thursday. Seven people were killed and 20 others injured in attacks by the Sudanese military and allied militiamen on areas in southern Jebel Marra on Saturday.
Ten villages northwest of Kalokitting burned to ashes, making about 30,000 villagers homeless, a listener told Radio Dabanga from the area. “In the afternoon the soldiers and militiamen raided and torched the villages. Four women, two men, and a child were killed.”
That same day, two secondary school students were killed in air raids in the south, on the area around Golol, and a boy was fatally hit by a missile when government troops shelled the area of Toran Touna. In Tawila locality, a minor and a man were killed in an aerial bombardment on Thursday night. The bombardment coincided with a visit of the North Darfur Governor, who held a speech in Tawila town, calling on the tens of thousands of displaced people from Jebel Marra to voluntarily return to their homes.
According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Sudan, the number of people displaced by the recent violence in Jebel Marra reached 96,000 by 28 February. Of this reported number, 65,800 people have been registered. The majority of the newly displaced are in North Darfur.
People fleeing the attacks on villages in Jebel Marra are still pouring into the camps for the displaced in North and Central Darfur. The newly displaced in North Darfur have received food aid, while those in Central Darfur are still in urgent need of humanitarian assistance.
An activist in the camps in Tawila reported that 47 families arrived there last week and the Sudanese Red Crescent has registered them. The activist said that the UN World Food Programme (WFP) distributed millet and lentils to a group of newcomers in the Tawila camps. “This brings the number of those who have received food aid to 28,000.”
In a joint statement on 3 March, the AU Commission chairwoman, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, and the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, call on the Sudanese government to fully cooperate with Unamid to facilitate its freedom of movement, as well as that of the humanitarian actors.