KHARTOUM: Sudan’s army said on Wednesday a rebel group that has refused to sign a key peace deal had shelled a town in the southern state of West Kordofan, wounding two officers.
The reported artillery strikes in Lagawa, some 580 km southwest of the capital Khartoum, come after ethnic clashes last week in a land dispute near the town left several people dead.
“Forces belonging to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North launched indiscriminate shellings,” the armed forces said in a statement.
It said the attacks, which took place on Tuesday, smashed into a market and two neighborhoods in Lagawa and wounded two members of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The army said rebel troops then launched an assault, but soldiers were able “to force them to withdraw.”
The SPLM-N rebels in the area, a faction led by Abdelaziz Al-Hilu based in the rugged Nuba Mountains, have not commented on the reports.
It follows clashes that erupted on Friday following a “dispute over land ownership” between rival ethnic Nuba and Arab Misseriya groups, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
The UN said there were “reports of 12 people killed and 20 wounded” in the violence on Friday, but Sudan’s armed forces said five had died. Rebels denied involvement in the fighting.
On Tuesday, as the state governor visited Lagawa “in an attempt to de-escalate the situation,” the town was hit by shelling “reportedly coming from nearby mountains,” the UN said.
The latest violence comes as Sudan grapples with deepening political unrest and a spiraling economic crisis since last year’s military coup, led by army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan.
Hilu’s SPLM-N was once part of the rebel force fighting the 1983-2005 civil war against Khartoum, which ended in a peace deal that paved the way for the eventual independence of South Sudan in 2011.
The rebel SPLM-N, left in the rump state of Sudan, continued to battle the government of President Omar Bashir, who was ousted in April 2019. Following Bashir’s ouster, a civilian-military transitional government declared a “permanent ceasefire.” Hilu’s faction was one of two holdout groups who refused to sign a 2020 peace deal.
The army said Tuesday’s attacks were “a clear violation of the cease-fire and hostilities agreement.”
