A Sudanese medical group says a rebel force aligned with the Rapid Support Forces killed 27 people, four of them children, in South Kordofan. The Sudan Doctors Network, which tracks casualties in the war, put out a statement on Tuesday naming the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North in two places inhabited by the Otoro, a minority in the Nuba Mountains: Qardud and Abu Hamama. Associated Press, from Cairo, and Al Jazeera both carried the account on Wednesday. The network said people had fled toward Abu Hitan and Kadugli, the state’s largest town. It called attacks on unarmed civilians, including women and children, on ethnic grounds “an explicit violation of international humanitarian law,” and warned the fighting there could widen into a broader ethnic conflict.
This is a second war sitting on top of the first. Sudan’s army and the RSF have been fighting since April 2023. SPLM-N, a breakaway from the movement that now governs South Sudan, is led by Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, who has lined up with the RSF and with the parallel government the paramilitaries have tried to stand up. Land disputes between SPLM-N-linked forces and the Otoro had already turned into heavy fighting earlier this year. Anadolu Agency, which also had the doctors’ statement, said the movement did not immediately respond. Women were among the wounded, the network said. It asked other governments to pressure al-Hilu’s leadership to stop, and for aid to get through.
Kordofan has been a main front since last October, with the army on one side and the RSF and SPLM-N on the other, and tens of thousands already displaced. Al Jazeera, citing existing tallies, said the wider civil war has killed at least 59,000 people and forced some 14 million from their homes. The World Health Organization, in the same report, put the number who need humanitarian help at 33.7 million — about two thirds of the country. None of those figures are a substitute for a count of Tuesday’s dead in Qardud and Abu Hamama. That number, for now, is the doctors’ 27.
Sources: Associated Press; Al Jazeera.
