A group of armed Chadian men killed 18 Sudanese servicemembers on Friday during an ambush in the restive Darfur region, official statements said.
The 18 Sudanese belonged to a contingent made up of army troops, policemen and members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that was tracking cattle robbers in central Darfur, two separate statements from the Interior Ministry and the military-led Sovereign Council said.
The ambush took place late on Thursday, they added, without providing any details on the perpetrators.
The deputy head of Sudan's Sovereign Council and commander of the RSF, Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, led mourners in a Friday funeral service for the fallen soldiers.
He urged local residents to exercise self-restraint and not to take the law into their own hands, pledging that authorities will do what is necessary to prevent a repeat of such attacks.
The porous border between Sudan and Chad has for decades been virtually lawless, with armed groups roaming the area stealing cattle and robbing commercial convoys.
Gen Dagalo has been in Darfur for weeks seeking an end to deadly feuds between the vast region’s ethnic groups after hundreds were killed and tens of thousands displaced in recent months.
Tribal and ethnic feuds in Darfur are almost exclusively about land, pastures and water.
The region was the site of a devastating civil war in the 2000s, when rebel groups took up arms against the government of now-ousted dictator Omar Al Bashir to demand a bigger share of national resources and an end to the monopoly on power by northern Sudanese.
The war left 300,000 people dead and displaced 2.5 million.
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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