When Apes Attack

While the world's attention is focused on the growing ethnic genocide in Sudan, an even more serious crisis is being larely ignored. In the Sudanese capital of Kassala, far from the world's eyeshot, gangs of roving monkeys are on a deadly rampage, attacking innocent women, children, and shopkeepers.

Monkeys attack women, children

HORDES of monkeys are running wild in the Sudanese state capital Kassala, attacking women and children and looting shops for food, Al-Anbaa newspaper reported today.

The groups are going on the rampage in two suburbs of the city, close to the frontier with Eritrea, the newspaper said.

The monkeys launch "organised attacks which last several hours", targeting "bakeries and grocery stores".

They attack women and children, run into homes, "breaking kitchen utensils and snatching food from the children" and open the doors of refrigerators to get at the food inside, according to one resident, Salah Osman al-Khedr.

He put the phenomenon down to the wholesale cutting down of trees which has deprived the monkeys of their sole source of food.

The attacks start at dawn and sometimes last until dusk, he said.

It is imperative that the world community act now to reign in these violent primates -- and I'm still talking about the monkeys.