Floods kill 9 in Sudan's Darfur

Khartoum, July 17: Heavy rains and flash floods in Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur killed nine people, media reported.

The deaths occurred in the town of El-Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur. "Heavy rains lashed the north and east parts of El-Fasher causing floods," the town's municipal commissioner Eltijani Abdullah Salah told SUNA yesterday.

Salah said nine people drowned in the floods, including two from a camp for internally displaced people. The United Nations aid agencies had warned of flooding in Sudan between July and November this year.

Flash floods and heavy rains already damaged more than 2,500 houses in the state of Sennar last month, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest weekly bulletin.

Darfur has seen violence since 2003 when ethnic minority rebels rose up against President Omar al-Bashir, accusing his Arab-dominated government of marginalising the region after which Bashir mounted a brutal counter-insurgency.

At least 300,000 people have been killed in the conflict and another 2.5 million have fled their homes, the UN says.

PTI