Two engineers working for a Turkish electricity company were kidnapped by gunmen in the war-torn Darfur region.
Two Turkish citizens who had been kidnapped in Sudan, in the conflictive region of Darfur, have been rescued after a special operation, as confirmed late yesterday by media in Turkey citing sources from the company for which the victims of the kidnapping were working.
The two Turkish nationals, identified as two engineers working for a Turkish electricity company operating in the region, were abducted on Tuesday in western Sudan along with their Sudanese driver as they were returning home from work in the city of Al- Fashir; according to the account given by the driver, several armed men stopped the vehicle and, after hitting the driver, took the car to another location.
The driver, who was released shortly after by the kidnappers, told to the authorities – after being treated for his injuries in a hospital – that the perpetrators of the kidnapping had not demanded any ransom and that they had claimed that “do not have problems” with the Turks, but that they would held them as hostages “until the perpetrators of the attacks against the tribes are captured” by the authorities.
A head of the Turkish company they work for confirmed in statements to media that the incident was not related to the company’s activities, but to internal struggles in the region, and that it seemed more like a way of putting pressure on the local authorities. The Sudanese governor of Darfur had referred to the incident on Twitter on Tuesday, “regretting” what happened and asking the kidnappers to release both engineers safely.
After being rescued in the operation, the two Turkish nationals kidnapped in Sudan are expected to be transferred to Turkey in the next few hours, or days. Darfur is a war-torn region to the west of North Sudan – the part of Sudan left over after South Sudan’s split in 2011 – that is still suffering the consequences of the bloody civil war that broke out in 2003, motivated by racial and tribal causes: over the past weekend alone, at least 48 people were killed in tribal armed clashes. Sudan also faces great political uncertainty after the coup in October that ended the democratising process: dozens of civilians have died in protests against the coup.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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