News Article by AFP posted on December 11, 2000 at 00:08:29: EST (-5 GMT)
Twenty-three killed in Sudan mosque massacre: new toll
KHARTOUM,
Dec 10 (AFP) - A total of 23 people were killed by an
Islamic militant
gunman who went on a rampage at a mosque near the
Sudanese capital on Friday,
a report said Sunday after two more died
of their wounds.
Two people died in the hospital on Saturday after they were shot
and
wounded by the extremist at the mosque in Jarafa village outside
the capital
Khartoum, the independent newspaper Akhbar Al-Yom said.
Journalists with the state-run SUNA news agency told AFP the
death toll
remained at 23 on Sunday.
The two new victims were reported to be men over 50 years old
and were to
be buried within a day of their deaths following Islamic
custom.
A mass funeral for most of those who died Friday night was
staged Saturday
with blanketed corpses carried on bedsteads to the
graveyard in Jarafa.
Police said Friday that all the people whom Abbas al-Baqir
Abbas, 33, shot
and killed were worshippers. Abbas, an extremist
from the Takfir wal-Hijra
group, was himself killed in a shootouts
with police outside the mosque.
However, witnesses and newspapers said Sunday that the gunman
not only
targeted worshippers but also people outside when he went
on a rampage
through the village, killing at least two boys in
indiscriminate fire.
Witnesses in the village said he avoided targetting the women's
section of
the mosque and at one point reassured a woman who tried
to flee that he would
not shoot women.
The massacre took place during Friday evening prayers at the
mosque of the
pacifist Ansar al-Sunna sect in the village of Jarafa
on the outskirts of
Omdurman, part of the metropolitan area of the
Sudanese capital Khartoum.
The outlawed Takfir wal-Hijra (Atonement and Self-Denial)
believes the
Islamic law that governs Sudan should be implemented by
force, while Ansar
al-Sunna, (Supporters of the Rules of the Prophet
Mohammed) does not.
The Takfir wal-Hijra has carried out attacks on Ansar's mosques
two other
times since 1996.
Newspaper and other accounts said Abbas had argued at the Jarafa
mosque a
number of times in the past while visiting his brother
Ismail in the village.
The sect itself accused him of having threatened worshippers and
prayer
leaders and now called on the government to ban the
activities of the group.
President Omar el-Beshir's adviser for legal and political
affairs, Abdel
Basset Subderat, told reporters that the interior
minister and other key
cabinet ministers had given wider guidelines
for security forces to curb
violence.
He did not specify what the measures were.
"This amendment is not for specific organizations," he told
journalists
who asked whether it targetted the Taqfir. "It is left
to the security forces
to enforce it."
Beshir had promised increased security measures on Saturday.
Abbas' uncle Mohammed Ahmed Osman told Sunday's edition of the
official
Al-Anbaa newspaper that Abbas' mother deserted the family
home because of his
religious fanaticism.
He added that Abbas was also deported from Libya before
completing his
studies there in the faculty of economics at Tripoli
University, where he led
Islamist groups the authorities saw as
threatening security.
Police added that Abbas served in the militia known as the
popular defense
forces before undergoing military training and
fighting anti-government
rebels waging a 17-year civil war in
southern Sudan.