ethnic violence - The African Mirror

Jan

2024

Ethnic killings in one Sudan city left up to 15,000 dead, UN report says

BETWEEN 10,000 and 15,000 people were killed in one city in Sudan's West Darfur region last year in ethnic violence by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and allied Arab militia, according to a United Nations report seen by Reuters. In the report to the U.N. Security Council, independent U.N. sanctions monitors attributed the toll in El Geneina to intelligence sources and contrasted it with the U.N. estimate that about 12,000 people have been killed across Sudan since war erupted on April 15, 2023, between the Sudanese army and the RSF. The monitors also described as "credible" accusations that the United Arab…

Feb

2021

By The African Mirror

Anger, fear runs deep after months of ethnic violence in western Ethiopia

HUMAN RIGHTS

MARIA GERTH-NICULESCU A series of government-sponsored community reconciliation efforts in Ethiopia’s western Benishangul-Gumuz region has failed to curb months of ethnic conflict that has claimed hundreds of lives and left more than 100,000 people displaced. The peace forums are aimed at bridging community divides, but disputes over land ownership and a lack of accounting for brutal tit-for-tat massacres continue to fuel anger in a region long troubled by deep undercurrents of ethno-nationalism. The reconciliation drives, involving elders and religious leaders, have been held in a number of wards around Gelgel Beles – the capital of the Metekel Zone, the area hardest hit…

Dec

2020

By The African Mirror

Gunmen kill more than 100 in attack in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region

NEWS

GUNMEN killed more than 100 people in a dawn attack in the western Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia, the human rights commission said, as residents described fleeing the latest deadly assault in an area bedevilled by ethnic violence. The attack occurred in the village of Bekoji in Bulen county in the Metekel zone, the state-run Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said in a statement, an area where multiple ethnic groups are living. Africa's second-most populous nation has been grappling with regular outbreaks of deadly violence since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was appointed in 2018 and accelerated democratic reforms that loosened the state's…

Oct

2020

By The African Mirror

South Sudan families displaced by fighting forced out again by floods

NEWS

ANDREEA CAMPEANU BY the time the waters started rising, ethnic violence had already forced South Sudanese mother Vorgol Poulo, her husband, and their seven children to flee their home twice this year. They were desperate to stay home when the rains began in July but ten days of heavy rainfall destroyed most of their possessions, forcing them out for a third time. "The cows are sick. We have lost so many, we don't know the number," said Pulo, who sold charcoal before flooding put most of the market under water. She spoke to Reuters on a patch of grass poking…