Sudan army, militant tribesmen target SPLM-N supporters in Blue Nile region

Members of the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and groups of allied tribesmen have been killing and robbing people in the southern part of Blue Nile region last month. They are in particular targeting members of other tribes suspected of supporting the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North faction under the leadership of Abdelaziz El Hilu (SPLM-N El Hilu).

The Kampala-based Darfur Network for Human Rights (DNHR) said in a report yesterday that on August 20, SAF soldiers and allied Funj* gunmen attacked Khor El Boudi, Jorot Shareg and Jorot Burun in El Kurmuk in the south of the Blue Nile region**.

The attacks took place under the leadership of SAF officers Ali Rabee and Mohamed El Fakeh, and Zeidan Ali, the king of Fazukuli and former member of the National Congress Party of ousted dictator Omar Al Bashir, the report states.

The attackers, riding in more than 100 vehicles, assaulted the residents, plundered and torched their houses. At least 21 people were injured, among them a 15-year-old girl who was taken to the hospital in Assosa across the border in Ethiopia, where she died.

Other injured people died on the road to Ethiopia. Victims told DNHR that had to travel a long distance from Jorot and Khor El Boudi, carrying their wounded relatives on their shoulders or on wooden beds, to Assosa. They complained about rough and bushy roads and the absence of any medical aid on the way.

Ten days before, on August 10, a SAF unit of 200 soldiers in 50 vehicles attacked Burun tribesmen in the area west of Jorot. They searched for SPLM-N El Hilu fighters, and when they did not find them, they held civilians whom they questioned about rebel sites in the area. They tortured them, accusing them of supporting the  movement.

On the evening of August 11, a group of army soldiers and members of the militant Funj group Soud El Nile El Azrag (the Blue Nile Blacks) attacked the area west of Jorot Burun, and killed four civilians, including a man who previously served in the SPLM-N.

A Jorot Burun tribesman told DNHR that the attackers sexually assaulted and raped civilians, plundered their houses, and burned them to the ground.

More than 300 people, primarily children, women, elders, and people with disabilities, sought refuge in refugee camps in South Sudan. 

In June, about two months after war broke out between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the SPLM-N El Hilu began to attack army bases in South Kordofan and the southern part of the Blue Nile region. Fighting between the army and the rebel movement continued the following months. On September 5, Radio Dabanga reported renewed attacks on an army base in Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan.

* The Funj, also spelled Fung, are a dark-skinned people of Arab origin. Funj leader Amara Dungas founded the Black Sultanate in Sennar, on the left bank of the Blue Nile,  in 1504. This Funj dynasty ruled large parts of (south-eastern) Sudan for more than two centuries. The present boundaries of the Dar Funj (homeland of the Funj) encompass Jebel Gereiwa and Jebel Agadi in the north of Blue Nile region, Fazughli in the east, Keili in the south, and the northern part of Burun country at the South Sudanese border.

** On August 8 last year, Gen Ahmed El Omda, Governor of the then Blue Nile state, issued a number of decrees based on the October 2020 Juba Peace Agreement (JPA) by which Blue Nile state became a region, and its seven localities ‘governorates’. International IDEA stated in 2021 that though the Blue Nile and Kordofan protocol incorporated in the JPA grants autonomy to these states, it does not specifically provide that they become a region.