Church group says six killed in Equatoria bombing

Government of Sudan aircraft bombed the village of Mura Hatiha in Eastern Equatoria on Sunday, 2 September, killing six people, according to a Sudan Catholic Information Office (SCIO) report on Wednesday. A high-altitude Antonov bomber dropped 24 bombs on Mura Hatiha, located 20 km east of the government-controlled town of Torit [4.27 N; 32.31 E] in a four hour period on Sunday morning, it quoted a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Torit as saying. Church sources and aid agencies said that Mura Hatima had a solely civilian population, the report added. “The whole village is mourning the victims of this indiscriminate bombing on civilians by the Khartoum regime,” the SCIO quoted a Catholic priest from the nearby village of Ikotos, as saying. “It is totally inhuman for the government to target villages which have no military presence at all,” he added.

The bombing was the second such raid on Eastern Equatoria in recent weeks, according to the SCIO. On 26 August, government aircraft attacked the villages of Ikotos and Hiyala and a camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) at Ngaluma, it said.