Sudan Gunman Kills 20

A gunman killed 20 people in a mosque north of Sudan's capital on Friday night, state television reported.

The television interrupted its broadcast to say an unidentified gunman had walked into the mosque in the village of Garaffa, north of Omdurman, the twin city of the capital Khartoum, and opened fire during evening prayers.

He killed 20 worshippers and wounded 40 others in the Al-Sunna Al-Mohammediyya Mosque.

Police rushed to the mosque and shot the gunman after he refused to surrender, state television said in a later report. Initially, TV reports had said the gunman was arrested.

The gunman was identified in TV reports as Abbas al-Baqer Abbas from the central region of el-Gezira. It said he belonged to a group known as Takfir wal Hijra, an Islamic militant organization.

The motive for the attack was not immediately known, but Takfir wal Hijra attacked a rival Islamic sect in 1996.

Egypt's Middle East News Agency said that in 1996 Takfir wal Hijra attacked another mosque belonging to the Al-Sunna al-Mohammediyya sect, killing 12 people.

Takfir wal Hijra literally means Repentance and Flight. The fuller meaning is "repent your sins and flee the sinful world."

The name was used in Egypt in the early 1970s by a violent offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Since then the name has periodically been used by groups in other Arab countries. It is known to have been active recently in Algeria and Jordan.

For the past two decades, Sudan has been split by a civil war, pitting black Christians and animists in the country's south against the Islamic government based in the north. According to the CIA, the war and resulting famine has claimed 1.5 million lives.

The U.S. State Department has sharply criticized the government of Sudan for human rights violations — including allegedly permitting the practice of slavery — and for conducting aerial bombardments on civilian areas in the south.

The U.S. also lists Sudan as a state that sponsors terrorism; in August 1998, the U.S. launched air strikes on a Sudanese pharmaceutical plant that was allegedly manufacturing chemical weapons.