A governor from Sudan’s Darfur region has been killed hours after accusing the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) of committing genocide.
In a TV interview, Khamis Abakar had asked for international intervention to stop violence in West Darfur he blamed on the RSF and its Arab militia allies.
The conflict that erupted two months ago between the RSF and army has inflamed ethnic tensions in Darfur.
The army said the RSF abducted Abakar and executed him, which it denies.
He is the most senior official known to have been killed since the conflict began in April.
Video footage circulating on social media appears to show a group of armed men, some wearing RSF uniforms, detaining the governor of West Darfur state on Wednesday.
But the RSF blamed “outlaws” for his death, saying its fighters had tried to protect Abakar by taking him to their headquarters in El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur.
It was then overrun and the governor kidnapped and “assassinated in cold blood”, the RSF said.
Black African and Arab communities in Darfur have long been at loggerheads – with the worst violence erupting two decades ago when non-Arabs took up arms accusing the government of discrimination.
In response, the government armed Arab militias, known as the Janjaweed. They were accused of widespread atrocities and ethnic killings, described as the first genocide of the 21st Century.
The RSF was borne out of these Janjaweed fighters – and now they and other Arab militias have again been accused of targeting African communities, going on the rampage in El Geneina.
The city is a symbol of black African power in Darfur and many people from the Massalit ethnic group live there.
“Civilians are being killed randomly and in large numbers,” Governor Abakar told Saudi-owned Al-Hadath TV on Wednesday, saying the army was doing nothing to help those under attack.
Last week, he told BBC Arabic’s emergency pop-up Sudan radio service that the killings were especially targeting his Massalit group: “El Geneina city has been attacked from three directions: east, south and west.
—BBC
