29th May, 2015
A Sudanese Air Force bomb on 25th May killed a three-year-old girl and wounded her Christian mother at their home in Kauda, South Kordofan state, sources said.
In the latest civilian death in nearly 3,500 government bombings of civilian targets since April 2012, Kaka Abdu Kuku Tiral died after the bomb hit outside her home while her mother, Hamida Osman of the Sudanese Church of Christ, sustained a head injury, aid workers said.
Kauda is the political capital of the Sudan People”s Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N), but there is no military installation near Osman”s house, they said. The area”s predominantly black ethnic Nuba people believe that since South Sudan split from Sudan in a 2011 referendum, the government”s goal of quashing SPLA-N rebels is also meant to rid the area of non-Arabs and Christianity.
Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has said post-secession Sudan will adhere more exclusively to Islam and Arabic culture.
The warplanes also targeted the compound of the Roman Catholic Diocese of El Obeid in Kauda on 25th May, damaging windows and doors of a church facility there, the sources told Morning Star News.
Government planes hit another civilian area of Kauda on 27th May at about noon, wounding two people, they said. Salah Ismail sustained a back injury, and Fatina Fadul was injured on her right leg, though it was not broken, the source told Morning Star News.
“As we talk now, the warplanes are flying over the area, causing a lot of panic among the population,” an eyewitness in Kauda told Morning Star News. “It had been calm for some months, but the renewed aerial bombardment is causing fear among the people.”
Sudan has dropped 3,740 bombs on civilian targets since April 2012, according to Nuba Reports.
Thousands of civilians have taken refuge in Nuba Mountain caves in South Kordofan, which borders South Sudan.
The Nuba people have longstanding complaints against Khartoum – including neglect, oppression and forced conversions to Islam in a 1990s jihad – but as Sudanese citizens on the northern side of the border, they were never given the option of secession in the 2005 peace pact between northern and southern Sudan.
The rebels in the Nuba Mountains were formerly involved with the southern Sudan People”s Liberation Army (SPLA) forces fighting Khartoum before the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Fighting between Sudan and South Sudan broke out in June 2011, when Khartoum forcefully attempted to disarm the SPLA-N in South Kordofan by force rather than awaiting a process of disarmament as called for in the CPA. When the CPA was signed in 2005, the people of South Kordofan were to vote on whether to join the north or the south, but the state governor suspended the process.
Sudan”s bombing of civilian targets in the country”s Nuba Mountains in May and June last year killed at least 10 Christians, sources told Morning Star News. Four children and an elderly woman were among the victims of bombings.
– Morning Star News (This is an edited version of the original story which can be found on Morning Star News website).
