KHARTOUM: Gunfire broke out and ambulance sirens wailed as hundreds of angry victims of a failed pyramid scheme protested in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region on Sunday, as a witness said police had opened fire.
"We have heard sporadic gunfire but it is not fighting," Kemal Saiki, an official of the United Nations-African Union Mission in Darfur (UNAMID), told AFP of the protest in El-Fasher, capital of North Darfur state.
"We have instructed our personnel to stay at their workplace," said the official of the force, which is based in El-Fasher.
Dirar Abdallah Dirar, a demonstrator contacted by telephone, said police had opened fire as the protesters tried to march on the house of the state governor, Mohammed Yussif Kibir.
"There have been casualties," he said.
Aid workers were staying indoors and unable to give a toll, while local authorities and hospitals were not immediately reachable.
Tension has been simmering for weeks in El-Fasher where thousands of small investors have lost millions of dollars in a "Ponzi scheme," a fraud involving the payment to investors of funds contributed by new investors.
According to local residents, the governor had promised during Sudan’s elections last month to compensate the victims but failed to keep his word. His office was unavailable for comment on Sunday.
"This situation has been brewing for weeks. I knew it would blow up one day or another," said another humanitarian aid worker in El-Fasher, which has around half a million inhabitants.
Many investors had sold land or ploughed in their savings to take part in the get-rich-quick scheme.
The marketplace in the center of El-Fasher has been renamed "Al-Mawasir Souk (market)," after the local colloquial Arabic for a swindle. Al-Mawasir has also become the name used across Sudan for the scam.
On Friday in an encounter with religious and local leaders, Governor Kibir gave assurances the authorities were not implicated and that investors would have their funds or property returned, state news agency SUNA reported.
Kibir also accused opposition candidates who had lost in last month’s elections of fuelling tensions in a bid to destabilize the fragile situation in Darfur, SUNA said. He did not identify them.
"Sunday’s protests appear to be organized and I don’t think it is over," a humanitarian worker who spoke on condition of anonymity said.
