Sudan Prime Minister survives assassination attempt

Sudan Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok on Monday survived an assassination attempt after an explosion went off near his convoy in the capital Khartoum.

Hamdok was going to his office when the blast went off. He is safe, Sudanese state TV reported.

Hamdok wrote on Twitter he is “safe and in good shape” following Monday’s explosion.

Hamdok said after the attempt that he will not stop the “match for change”.

“What happened will not stop the path of change, it will be nothing but an additional push in the strong waves of the revolution,” he added.

Footage posted online showed two white Japanese-made SUVs used by Sudan’s top officials parked on a street, damaged and their windows broken. 

“Another vehicle was also badly damaged in the blast. Several dozen people were seen at the site of the attack, chanting: “With our blood and soul, we redeem you, Hamdok.”

Sudan recently agreed to pay $30 million in settlement to the families of 17 US sailors killed in an al-Qaeda attack on the USS Cole.

The USS Cole warship was bombed in Yemen 20 years earlier by two Yemeni suicide bombers in a rubber vessel packed with up to 500lb of high explosives and butted the warship, creating a huge hole on its side.

Seventeen sailors were killed and over 35 others were also wounded as a result of the attack on the ship.

The transitional government has also agreed to hand over the country’s former dictator, Omar al-Bashir to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The decision to send over to The Hague the man who ruled Sudan for 30 years, was reached during peace talks between the government and rebel forces in Darfur last month.

Bashir is accused of orchestrating the infamous Darfur conflicts that took the lives of more than 300,000 people in a little over a decade.

In December last year, the government sentenced Bashir to two years in prison for corruption. He was specifically committed to a reform facility.

But the sentence was overwhelmingly derided for not being punitive enough. The conclusion picked up by the government, therefore, was a massive thirst to see Bashir in a steeper situation.