SRF ‘disperse army battalion’ in South Kordofan; 35,000 displaced

The Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) claims tro have dispersed a Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) battalion on Wednesday in Dilling locality, South Kordofan. The SRF announced in a statement that its member forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) dispersed a Sudanese army battalion the area of Wali Abu Si’da in the locality of Dilling. The spokesperson for the SPLM-N, Arnu Ngutulu Lodi, reported to Radio Dabanga that the SRF forces incurred heavy losses to the government troops on Wednesday morning. JEM spokesperson Jibril Adam Bilal said that their joint forces have crushed and dispersed what he called “government militias consisting of Janjaweed militias and foreign militias”. “We pursued them until the outskirts of Dilling town.” Thousands of newly displaced The renewed clashes between the armed rebel movements and the SAF in several parts of South Kordofan have caused a new wave of civilian displacement. On 1 December, the Government of Sudan’s Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) reported that over the past week an estimated 12,500 people have fled their homes in government-controlled areas, according to the latest Sudan bulletin of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The newly displaced people in Abu Karshola, Habila, Dalami, El Abbasiya and Delling urgently need assistance, particularly food, clean water, health and non-food relief supplies. HAC and humanitarian organisations have so far been unable to conduct rapid needs assessments in these areas due to the ongoing military operations. Consequently no assistance has yet been delivered to the newly displaced people. On 27 November, the SPLM-N issued a statement indicating that some 25,000 people in SPLM-N areas had fled to other South Kordofan localities, including Rashad, Habila and Dilling, following aerial bombardments and ground fighting between 21 and 25 November. The SPLM-N said that the displaced people who took refuge in the forests and mountains are in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. According to the humanitarian wing of the SPLM-N, the Sudan Relief and Rehabilitation Agency, at least 800,000 people in the SPLM-N controlled areas of South Kordofan and Blue Nile have been displaced or affected by conflict between the SAF and SPLM-N forces since June 2011. UN agencies are unable to verify these figures as they do not have access to SPLM-N areas. File photo (OCHA humanitarian bulletin, Sudan)  Related: Rebels claim attack on Sudanese military convoys on North-South Kordofan border (1 December 2013)Sudan’s rebels, army clash in Abu Zabad, North Kordofan (17 November 2013)