Arab militiamen killed at least 56 people in a raid in western Sudan, villagers said on Sunday, just days after the government declared the troubled region was stable. The militiamen, known as janjaweed, raided Abga Rajil village 50 km south of Nyala town on Saturday, witnesses said. Abdel-Rahman Rizk, 29, speaking from a Nyala hospital bed where he was recovering from a bullet wound to the thigh, said the militiamen arrived on horses, camels and a car and surrounded the village. "They were firing and people were scattering and they set fire to the houses and then they started picking off people as they ran out of their houses," he told Reuters.
Ibrahim Adam, also from the village, said: "The tally of those we buried was 56. Forty of them we buried in one grave." Others from the area gave the same figure, although an official from the Sudan Liberation army (SLA), one of the two main rebel groups in Darfur, said he had understood 46 were killed. Independent verification is hard to obtain in the remote Darfur region. The government said on Monday that Darfur was now stable and security would be maintained by police. |