Nuba Mountains: SPLM blocks Kadugli airport; thousands displaced by continuous bombing

SPLM blocks access to Kadugli Airport The Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in South Kordofan announced that they are currently surrounding the city of Kadugli, the capital of the region. Qamar Dahlman, media chancellor to the head of the SPLM South Kordofan, Abdul Aziz al Hilu, told Radio Dabanga that they also bombed the city’s airport and destroyed the roads leading to it. The air traffic was perturbed for the past two days as a result of these actions. The goal of this operation was to limit the continuous aerial bombing of the Nuba Mountains by the government forces, as the planes behind these attacks depart from Kadugli Airport. Aerial raids are continuously hitting the Nuba Mountains Thousands of citizens on the run Dahman furthermore added that over 70 000 citizens had fled the concerned zones in an attempt to escape from the attacks, and that a severe shortage of food and shelter was worsening the already critical humanitarian situation in the Nuba Mountains. The government is still preventing humanitarian organizations from accessing the affected areas, regardless of the heavy rainfalls currently hitting the region. A victim from the aerial raids. More pictures can be found here and here (external link) International Reactions For its part, Human Rights Watch called for the defense of human rights in South Kordofan, and pointed out the urgent need for an international presence on the ground in order to witness and stop the atrocities taking place in the region. “Tens of thousands of civilians in South Kordofan are in grave danger, and no one is on the ground to report on what is happening, much less do anything about it,” HRW-Africa director Daniel Bekele said in a statement yesterday.  A copy of a UN internal document obtained by the French Press Agency (AFP) revealed the organization’s concerns about the almost daily violences inflicted to the Nuba Mountains citizens. The United Nations also suspect the Sudanese Government of crimes against Humanity in the region, such as race- or religion-based violences. Famine, rain and bombing worsen already critical humanitarian situation Fights are ongoing between the Government forces and the SPLM in South Kordofan, but several organisations describe the situations in the Nuba Mountains as dramatic. Human Rights Watch estimates that the number of people displaced by the ongoing hostilities have more than doubled in the past few weeks, reaching about 150,000 now.