Women protest drowning of children at Khartoum Ministry

Dozens of women staged a demonstration outside Khartoum’s Ministry of Education yesterday after 22 students and a woman drowned in River Nile state on Wednesday.

The boat was reportedly taking them from El Kanisa area of El Kabna administrative unit on their way to schools in the area. The cause of the accident has been reported to be engine failure in the middle of the Nile, a river currently swollen due to the rainy season. Witnesses reported that after the boat’s engine failed, it hit a rock or tree trunk that caused it to capsize.

Activist Tahani Abbas told Radio Dabanga on Thursday that the women participating in the protest wore black cloths to express their mourning for the 22 drowned students and the drowned woman who was with the students, an official responsible for statistics at El Kabna hospital.

The demonstrators also mourned the death of three schoolgirls in Ombadda district in Omdurman, when a wall collapsed under the heavy rains on August 1. The protest lasted nearly an hour and was supported by dozens of passers-by, according to Abbas.

She criticised the government’s neglect towards the events, and demanded the resignation of the Federal Minister of Education and an acceleration of the investigation into the two incidents. “There are officials accountable for this.”