Gunman Kills at Least 20 in Sudan Mosque Attack 12/08/00
CAIRO (Reuters) - A lone gunman fired at random in a mosque near the Sudanese capital Khartoum on Friday, killing at least 20 worshippers and wounding 40 before police shot him dead, Sudan's state television reported.
The official Egyptian Middle East News Agency (MENA) said earlier more than 30 people had been killed and 100 wounded in the shooting during prayers at the mosque in Khartoum's sister city of Omdurman.
Sudanese television said the attack had been carried out by a
member of a Muslim sect, al-Takfir wa al-Hijra (Renunciation and Exile), who was shot dead by police at the scene.
It named him as Abbas Baqir Abbas, from the village of al-Dasis in Sudan's al-Jazirah region. It said he had fired on police officers trying to arrest him and they returned fire.
The television quoted a police statement as saying 20 people had been killed and more than 40 wounded, some seriously.
The report, monitored by the BBC, showed film of bodies in pools of blood and wounded people in bloodied clothes.
MENA said an angry crowd had gathered outside a hospital in
Omdurman where the casualties had been taken, demanding
revenge for the attack on the mosque, which belongs to supporters of another Muslim faction, Ansar al-Sunna.
The Khartoum-datelined MENA report gave no other details of the shooting, but said Ansar al-Sunna mosques had come under attack twice before in Sudan, including a 1996 incident in which 12 people were killed in Omdurman.
Sudan is due to hold presidential and parliamentary elections phased over nine days starting on Monday.
Most opposition parties are boycotting the polls, in which President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, whose 1989 military coup brought an Islamist government to power, is seeking election. |
