A senior commander in the Sudan Liberation Movement led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur was killed after unidentified gunmen attacked an artisanal mining site in South Darfur, local Sudanese media reported.
Mohamed Bashar Noreen, 58, was killed on Sunday night at a mining site in the West Keila area of Malam locality, according to witnesses and local sources cited by Darfur24.
A relative of Noreen said unidentified armed men attacked him while he was at the mining site before fleeing towards the town of Malam. The motive for the attack and the circumstances surrounding the killing remained unclear.
Noreen was regarded as one of the movement’s most senior commanders in East Jebel Marra and the areas of Malam, Keila and Kalkoli. He was also responsible for overseeing the movement’s administrative and financial affairs in the region.
Local residents formed a search party following the attack and tracked the assailants towards another area, but no arrests had been reported.
A military source in East Jebel Marra told Darfur24 that dozens of people had recently travelled to a nearby valley after gold was discovered there. Noreen had become involved in supervising the newly established artisanal mining site.
The source said Noreen was killed at night while travelling by camel between areas of East Jebel Marra and Malam.
Hundreds of residents from Keila and Malam later joined efforts to search for those responsible, amid widespread anger over the killing.
Noreen was among the early members of Abdel Wahid al-Nur’s Sudan Liberation Movement, which emerged in the early 2000s, and had become one of its prominent figures in East Jebel Marra.
The movement had not issued a statement on his death as of Monday, while Darfur24 said it was unable to obtain comment from the group’s official spokesperson.
Large parts of Darfur have experienced persistent insecurity, including armed robbery, killings and other violent crime.
