Ailafoon massacre: 8 years later

From UPENN African Studies archives: http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Newsletters/sdup97.html
8 years later, and no investigation was made in this horrific crime against young students who refused to go to war and just wanted to spent the Holidays Eid with their families... the number of killing was not even determined!

WAR - CONSCRIPTS
STUDENT CONSCRIPTS DIE FLEEING CAMP: `Sudanese soldiers shot and beat to death 74 student conscripts trying to flee the Ailafoon military camp just outside Khartoum on 2 April, the National Democratic Alliance said on 12 April. At least 55 others reportedly drowned when their boat capsized on the Blue Nile while they were trying to escape,' reports AP.
`The camp is 15 miles southeast of Khartoum. The government was believed to have forcibly picked up many of the men from streets and markets for training to fight insurgency in southern Sudan.
`The alliance said 261 recruits tried to escape the camp... Citing government forensic reports, the alliance said autopsies showed the men suffered "beatings with sticks, bullet wounds in the area between the stomach and chest, the spinal cord and the neck." It said its government sources conveyed the reports.
`The bodies of 12 students were handed over to their families, the alliance said, and 117 others were transported by tractor under armed escort and buried in a mass grave April 6.
`The students tried to escape after soldiers in the camp refused to allow them to go home for the [Eid al-Adha] Feast of the Sacrifice, a major Muslim holiday, an official in the opposition Umma Party's office in London told Associated Press. Only 15 students are left at the camp, where conscripts receive one meal a day and are forced to drink contaminated water, the party said.' (NDA/Umma/AP 12/Apr/98)
COMMANDER "ORDERED GUARDS TO FIRE": The conscripts had ignored the camp commander's order not to leave the camp, a member of the executive office of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), Mohamed al-Muatassim Hakim, told AFP.
As the conscripts began fleeing, the commander "ordered the guards to open fire in the direction of the young people, killing about 50 of them, while 150 others threw themselves into the Nile and went missing."
In the name of the Sudanese opposition, Hakim asked the UN Security Council to investigate the massacre and called for action by international human rights organisations. (AFP 6/Apr/98)