SUDAN: The death toll in violence in Khartoum sparked by the weekend death of former southern Sudanese rebel leader John Garang has risen to 46, police said yesterday.
In addition, there were 306 wounded. In some of the worst violence in the capital in years, angry southerners rampaged through Khartoum on Monday, burning shops and vehicles.
Yesterday northern and southern Sudanese clashed in a shanty town on the south side of Khartoum.
Meanwhile, the UN has offered to help investigate the cause of the helicopter crash which killed Mr Garang, Sudan's top UN envoy said.
Mr Jan Pronk said Mr Garang's death, announced on Monday, was a setback to a peace deal that ended Africa's longest civil war, but the speedy transition of power was a positive sign that the former rebel group could stay united without Mr Garang.
His Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) and the mainly Arab government in Khartoum signed a peace deal in January that ended the 21-year long civil war.
Mr Garang, who just three weeks ago became Sudan's vice-president in a peace deal hailed as a rare success for the continent, was killed when a Ugandan helicopter in which he was travelling went down in bad weather. There has been no suggestion of foul play.
The SPLM on Monday named Mr Garang's deputy, Salva Kiir, as its new head. Officials said he had widespread backing and would take Mr Garang's position of first vice-president in Sudan's new government.
Mr Pronk said the quick announcement showed Mr Kiir had the support of tribal factions within the movement, which some analysts had said could initiate a leadership crisis following Mr Garang's death.
"The fact that they appointed him right away means that they accept him, otherwise there would have been a discussion."
The civil war broadly pitted the Islamist Khartoum-based government against the mainly Christian and animist south, and was complicated by issues of oil, ethnicity and ideology. It claimed more than two million lives.
The peace deal included giving southerners the right to vote on secession after a six-year interim period and also shared out Sudan's oil wealth between north and south roughly equally. - (Reuters)