If you lived in South Kordofan, Sudan, you would have spent the last four years ducking into fox holes and running into caves, desperate to survive the aerial attacks that are an everyday part of your life.

People have been living in fear in South Kordofan since the Government of Sudan began to attack them in an attempt to stem support for the armed rebel movement – the Sudanese People’s Liberation Army – North (SPLA-N).

Determined at any cost to defeat the armed rebel movement, the Sudanese military are waging an unrelenting campaign of aerial and ground attacks against people living in rebel controlled areas. The Government sends ‘Antonov’ planes to target areas where people live and work – there are no military targets in sight. 

There are no military targets around. The Antonovs are for us. You will always find the Antonovs circling above where civilians live.

Amina, was forced to flee the fighting in her home, to a camp in Tunguli, Dalami (7 May 2015)

Nobody feels safe in South Kordofan

Nowhere is safe. Bombs fall on people’s homes both during the day while they are having lunch and at night while they are sleeping.

In February 2015 the Mother of Mercy Hospital received survivors of an Antonov attack in Umm Dorain County.  Eight children and one adult hid in a foxhole when they heard the plane.  However when a bomb hit a nearby shelter setting on fire the roof was blown off and fell into the foxhole where they were hiding.  Three of the children were killed instantly.  The other five children and the adult were transferred to the hospital.  Three of the survivors, all children, died at the hospital and the other three were eventually released.  

Sadly, this is not unusual. On 18 April 2015, Fighter jets fired four bombs at the village of Eral in Heiban County. Thirteen year old Khalil Yusuf Ergajig tried to run to a nearby foxhole, with four other children, but he did not make it in time. He was killed by shrapnel only a few meters away from safety. 

I was some distance from where the bomb landed and there were two other buildings in front of me. But still some shrapnel reached me and was embedded in my skull…

Najwa Omar, Heiban, 7 May 2015

Years of unrelenting attacks

Sudan has endured decades of civil war. In 2005, a peace agreement was signed (the Comprehensive Peace Agreement – CPA) which ended the conflict between the Sudan Government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), and to the split Sudan into two countries, Creating Sudan in the North and South Sudan. South Kordofan is part of Sudan (in the North).

Most of the South Kordofan population are from nomadic Misseriya and Hawazma Arab tribes and agriculturalist African Nuba communities. Having faced years marginalisation by governments of Sudan many support South Sudan and some fought alongside the SPLA during the civil war.

The current conflict in June 2011. One of the triggers was failure to fully implement the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA). Under the CPA, the people of South Kordofan should have been consulted on what they wanted for the future of the state.

Cut-off from the world

Bombs don’t only fall on people’s homes, they fall on schools, hospitals and even food stores. But no-one can get assistance because the Sudanese government has cut off SPLM-N controlled areas from the rest of the world.

Hundreds of people have died because they can’t reach hospitals or health services. State health care in South Kordofan has been decimated. Hospitals have been bombed, medical personnel have fled and essential medicines are not available. 

Alfadil Khalifa Mohammed lost his wife, Nahid Said Komi, 27, who was eight months pregnant, in an attack on 8 May 2015. The attack happened at a camp where they had fled to find safety. The baby was still alive when Nahid died and might have survived. He said, “It is too far to go when we need to go to a hospital. So many clinics and hospitals have been bombed and forced to shut down. The only place where my baby’s life might have been saved was the hospital in Gidel. But there was no way to get there. We would have had to walk, which would have taken far too long. People are dying here because they can’t access medical care.” 

Between May 2014 and January 2015, there was a measles outbreak. The World Health Organisation and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) carried out a vaccination campaign in the rest of Sudan, but were unable to get to rebel controlled areas of South Kordofan because of Government restrictions, preventing children living there getting vaccinated. Thirty children died. 

Don’t we matter?

The conflict in South Kordofan received a lot of international coverage and attention when it first began. But as attacks have intensified and casualties have risen over the last four years, the world seems to have lost interest.

The international community are failing to stop the Government of Sudan targeting men, women and children. Abandoning them to fight for their survival without any humanitarian assistance.

We have been telling the world for four years about what is happening to us. The facts are well known. But nothing changes. Is it because we do not matter to the world?"

Alfadil Khalifa Mohamed, school teacher at a refuge site in Tunguli, South Kordofan