Jane, Just to request a prayer from all people of God for the Sudanese Christians who are currently being cluster-bombed, tortured, starved and murdered as fighting intensifies in the Sudan...
U.N. says 100,000 Sudanese at risk after battle
10:28 a.m. Feb 10, 1998 Eastern
By Matthew Bigg
NAIROBI, Feb 10 (Reuters) - More than 100,000 civilians in southwest Sudan are at great risk because of a government decision to suspend international aid flights of food and medicine, the U.N.'s Sudan agency said on Tuesday.
Adding to the suffering, the Khartoum-based government has also bombed areas in Bahr el-Ghazal region where civilians gathered after fleeing fighting between government troops and rebels, aid officials said.
The civilians -- who fled fighting around the city of Wau and Aweil and Gogrial -- lack food, water and any medical supplies, said officials from Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS), which groups U.N. and 35 non-government aid agencies.
Aid supplies are stockpiled in Lokichoggio, northwest Kenya, but last week's decision by the government in Khartoum to suspend aid flights means help cannot reach the displaced.
''These aid flight suspensions are putting the lives of vulnerable civilians at great risk. The people displaced have been walking for several days without food and with little water and are exhausted,'' OLS said in a statement.
World Vision's relief director for Sudan, Bruce Menser, said on Tuesday: ''We have relief supplies and staff ready to move, but now innocent children and women will starve because a government which claims right over them is denying them the right to live.''
Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) forces under the command of Kerubino Kwanyin Bol attempted to seize Wau, the second largest city in southern Sudan, in an operation that started on January 28.
Fighting over the city has reached a stalemate, with the rebels and government troops needing to bring in reinforcements to tilt the struggle in their favour.
Bol's troops have seized the railroad running north from Wau, while government forces are based in barracks west of the city.
The government holds the airport, rendered inoperable by the closeness of SPLA artillery. The SPLA also says it holds Aweil town, 150 km (93 miles) northwest of Wau.
''The SPLA is bringing up reinforcements from Western Equatoria (province) by road using two routes, one via Tonj and Rumbek,'' said a Western analyst following the situation in Sudan.
Meanwhile the government is using an Antonov plane to bomb towns where civilians displaced by fighting have gathered, aid officials and observers said.
The government bombed Luanyaker town, 90 km (56 miles) northeast of Wau on Monday morning.
''The government is actually bombing civilian targets as it has done in the past... (and) in the last few days with intensity,'' the Western analyst said. There were no casualty figures.
High aerial bombing has been a regular feature of Sudan's conflict, which restarted in 1983.
Unconfirmed reports from other sources said government soldiers from southern ethnic groups were massacred by their northern colleagues in Wau after Bol rejoined the SPLA last month.
Bol left the movement in 1991 and last April joined five other rebel faction leaders to sign a peace agreement with the government. But he defected back to the SPLA in January after rejecting an offer by Khartoum of a vice-presidency of the Southern Coordinating Council -- the government for the south set up by Khartoum under the April peace deal.
Deep cultural, religious and political differences underpin Sudan's civil war, with the south is predominantly black and Christian while the north is largely Arab and Moslem. ^REUTERS@ |
