“Vehicle Theft Epidemic in Sudan: Areas and Vehicles Most Vulnerable to Theft in Khartoum”

Sudan

Sudanese citizens told exciting stories of theft and looting of their cars since the outbreak of the two generals’ war in Sudan in mid-April. Hardly an hour goes by without an incident of theft or looting of a vehicle being recorded in Khartoum.

One of the citizens told Al-Arabiya.net that he was driving his car on Al-Wadi Street, north of the city of Omdurman, and at one of the intersections, three armed men suddenly appeared in front of him, and without any advances, they ordered him to leave the car, and before he opened his mouth, they beat him with rifle butts and whips, out of excessive panic and surprise. Stung by whips, he was forced to flee, leaving the carriage.

The citizen added: After a few days, he was surprised by a post on Facebook with a picture of his car that it had been parked for days on a side street in Omdurman, and he wrote to the author of the post who asked him to send the ownership documents to verify, then he sent him a description of the place where it was parked and asked him to bring fuel because the car was empty of fuel. At first, he was frightened and thought that it was a plot to lure him, kidnap him, or kill him.

From Khartoum (Reuters)

But he gathered his limbs and headed to the place, and indeed he found the author of the publication waiting for him and retrieved his cart.

This weeping story is one of dozens of tragic stories and tales of victims of looting and theft of vehicles in Khartoum since the start of the military fighting in mid-April.

Terrifying statistics!

In view of these serious repercussions and the absence of the police and the rest of the security and justice agencies, the owners of the vehicles only found widespread social networking sites to publish pictures and data of the looted and missing vehicles, asking for the help of the citizens so that they could recover their vehicles again.

On the other hand, unofficial statistics revealed that the number of missing vehicles is 409. However, other sources confirmed to Al-Arabiya.net that the numbers are dozens of times higher than the aforementioned statistic. There are reports that have not appeared and there are still terrifying secrets that have not been revealed yet, because the owners were killed while being looted or robbed, or they left their places after the expansion of the scope of military operations. And mutual bombing, leaving everything behind, including their vehicles, without knowing what happened to them after that.

In addition, the vast majority of vehicles looted and then found have their plates removed and smeared with mud, which makes it very difficult or almost non-existent to identify or infer the missing vehicles through the plates.

There are also huge numbers of vehicles that were burned and destroyed during air raids or artillery shelling.

In turn, the “Miftahk” initiative – one of the voluntary initiatives active with lost vehicles – revealed that the number of missing vehicles announced on the initiative’s Facebook page amounted to 409 vehicles as of today, Tuesday. The “Toyota Hilux” brand, known locally as “Al-Bakassi”, tops the list of 80 missing vehicles, followed by the “Tussan”, “Prado” and the rest of the other brands, while reports of the “Avante” and “Elantra” missing vehicles began to rise remarkably, reaching Almost 20 cases of missing, which puts it on the list of vehicles most vulnerable to theft and looting.

According to the initiative, the Riyadh region, east of Khartoum, is considered the most vulnerable to vehicle theft, with 38 vehicles recorded, followed by the areas of “Kafouri”, “Al-Safia”, “Shambat” in Khartoum North, and finally the “Beit Al-Mal” area in Omdurman, “Hay Al-Huda” and Qadisiyah east of the Nile.

Read also