Aba Island is an island on the White Nile to the south of Khartoum, Sudan. It is the original home of the Mahdi in Sudan and the spiritual base of the Umma Party. Responding to a 1970 Ansar protest against his newly established government in Khartoum, Gaafar Nimeiry attacked the island with the help of Egyptian fighter-bombers, allegedly directed by Hosni Mubarak who was then a young air force chief. About 12,000 Ansar were killed in the assault including the uncle of Sadiq al-Mahdi and the extensive holdings and property of the Mahdi family were sequestered by the state.
Famous quotes containing the word island:
“I ... would rather be in dependance on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon earth, or than on no nation. But I am one of those too who rather than submit to the right of legislating for us assumed by the British parliament, and which late experience has shewn they will so cruelly exercise, would lend my hand to sink the whole island in the ocean.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)