South Darfur State Police commissioner, Major General Niazi Saleh said that the state’s security forces made an effort to prevent the looting and theft of UNAMID’s headquarters in South Darfur ,but it failed due to the scrambling of large numbers of citizens and IDPs from Draig and Atash camp to loot the site.
Niazi said in a press statement that, the robberies and looting started 3 days ago, and government forces were able to arrest a number of those involved, adding that complaints were filed against them before things got worse and out of control on Thursday evening, when groups estimated at more than 50,000 people stormed the premises, mostly from IDP camps.
Last November, the premises of UNAMID mission including the assets were officially handed over to the Sudanese government so as to be allocated to Nyala University, according to an agreement between the Sudanese government and the United Nations.
However, the compound was not formally handed over Nyala to University by the state government , at a time when the latter deployed joint forces to safeguard the premises.
Earlier this year, the Mission’s headquarters in the capital of West Darfur, El Geneina, was also subjected to similar looting, which led to complete destruction of the site.
The police commissioner stated that, despite the use of tear gas, the security forces were unable to disperse the large groups of people who had stormed the compound.
“We used huge quantities of tear gas ,until we ran out of gas , and the large numbers were still insisting on storming and looting the camp.” He added
The police chief stressed sending security reinforcements from Rapid Support Forces to control the situation, which he described as a disaster.
He warned of the seriousness of the situation, especially after the start of fires by citizens in light of the existence of huge warehouses for petroleum products .
Niyazi, accused unidentified parties of inciting internally displaced person IDPs to loot the headquarters as well as creating chaos and lawlessness to achieve hidden agendas.
“What happened might be a prelude of a major sabotage operation targeting other vital sites in the state”. He further added.