Focus on aerial bombing of Rier

The death toll after a government air raid on Rier in Makien County, western Upper Nile, on Tuesday morning has risen to 18 people, with up to 85 others wounded, many seriously, according to the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A). Many of the wounded lost limbs in the raid by an Antonov-32 bomber, in which 16 bombs were reportedly dropped in a series of sorties between 2 am (23:00 GMT) and 8.30 am (05:30 GMT), and the most seriously injured have been evacuated to hospitals in Equatoria, in southern Sudan, and Lokichokio, northwestern Kenya, according to the rebel movement and humanitarian sources. It was not clear how many of those killed in this attack, about three hours' walk from the front line of fighting, were rebel soldiers, the BBC reported on Thursday. Rier is located south of Bentiu, near the road built to access oil concession Block 5A, but where oil companies have been forced by insecurity to suspend operations. Fighting has been raging for months between government forces and the SPLA in oil-rich Unity State/western Upper Nile. [see IRIN Focus] The attack on Rier, a relief centre for thousands of displaced civilians, was "a blatant violation of the agreement for the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructures which the SPLM/A and the government of Sudan signed in March," according to the rebel spokesman, Samson Kwaje, the same day. The United States reported in March that it had secured agreement from the government of Sudan and southern rebels to ensure the protection of civilians against military attack. That followed a government helicopter-gunship attack on a relief food distribution in Bieh, also in western Upper Nile, in February, which killed at least 24 people. Khartoum subsequently apologised and said it would put measures in place to avoid a repetition. The Khartoum government has denied the SPLM/A reports of the Rier attack this week, with the government spokesman, Abd al-Rahman Hamzah, describing them as "completely untrue", Associated Press (AP) reported on Thursday. "Sudan has asked the international community to press the rebels to agree on a comprehensive ceasefire in Sudan...," Hamzah said. "Now they want to put the ball in the court of the government by saying it bombed several villages in the [Unity] region." The NGO Norwegian People's Aid (NPA) has confirmed the incident, saying that its staff were at the location - between Mayam and Mankien - 11 hours after the attack to treat the injured and evacuate the seriously wounded to NPA hospitals in Equatoria. "People were sleeping [at the time of the first raid] and therefore taken unaware," it said in a statement. "The situation is described as a carnage, with bodies lying everywhere, legs and arms blown off. Most of those wounded were young boys aged 10 and 11 years." [see http://www.npaid.org/] The NPA said two journalists were independent witnesses of the attack and that a senior US aid official had observed the gruesome aftermath. There were no Operation Lifeline Sudan personnel on the ground. This area, in common with most of western Upper Nile, is flight-denied by the Sudanese government. Some victims of the Rier bombing had been taken to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Lopiding Hospital at Lokichokio, which was already operating at or near full capacity, according to humanitarian sources. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Friday that it had admitted six people in Lokichokio on Thursday morning, they required surgery for serious injuries, but that it could not confirm that these "weapon-wounded" individuals had come from Rier - or, indeed, that there was any attack on Rier - because it did not have access to that area at the moment. Those admitted had a variety of serious head, limb and internal injuries, and it might be suspected that these were related to fighting in western Upper Nile, but this could not be confirmed, because the ICRC had not evacuated them from southern Sudan, but just taken them into its care at Lokichokio, the organisation's spokesman in Nairobi, Florian Westphal, told IRIN. The SPLM/A on Thursday called the attack "a bloody violation", which again demonstrated that the government of Sudan would not abide by whatever proposals US peace envoy Danforth might make. The incident was "in violation of an agreement on a military stand-down [or ceasefire] reached in the last 36 hours between the US, Khartoum and the SPLM/A", according to Kwaje. That agreement was to operate from 19 to 25 May in order to allow a high-level US humanitarian delegation - led by Andrew Natsios, administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) - to visit the Nuba Mountains region of Southern Kordofan, Bahr al-Ghazal and western Upper Nile, he said. "This [Rier] attack is therefore calculated to prevent Natsios's visit to the area so that he may not witness for himself the displacement, destruction and plight of the civilian population in the oilfields areas," Kwaje added. Hamzah, as quoted by AP on Thursday, said it was "completely false" to suggest that the Sudanese government was trying to prevent Natsios from visiting the area, and that his visit had been officially welcomed by Khartoum. A US diplomat in Nairobi said Natsios's planned visit to Ganyial, some 50 km northwest of Rier, would go ahead as planned, the report added. The majority of people in Rubkona Province in western Upper Nile have been forced to flee their homes in the last few weeks "due to an intensification of conflict in the highly contested oil-rich areas", the Church World Service reported on Wednesday. Perhaps as many as 75,000 people had been displaced as the government deliberately targeted civilian populations, it added. "Victims interviewed have given consistent reports of being bombarded by planes, strafed and hunted down by helicopter gunships, and of being chased and shot at by armed horsemen militias and foot soldiers," it said, adding that this was part of an ongoing, but worsening, experience for the people of western Upper Nile. Earlier this month, the European Coalition on Oil in Sudan suggested that 50,000 civilians had been forced to flee the express targeting of civilians "in an extended area along the road from the oil site at Rier and southwards" - though the government had claimed the purpose of its military engagement was to rid the area of SPLA forces. Warring parties in southern Sudan's oil-rich western Upper Nile region are responsible for "appalling" civilian mortality from infectious diseases and violence, the international medical organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) reported on 30 April. "Thousands of people have died from diseases that can be treated, even during conflict. It is the way the war is waged that limits access to medical services," said Arjan Hehenkamp, Operational Director of MSF, in a statement launching the report, "Violence, Health, and Access to Aid in Unity State/western Upper Nile, Sudan". [see http://irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=27539] The humanitarian needs were massive, but there was virtually no aid agency presence in the area, where attacks on health workers and facilities deprived patients of any care, MSF stated. The European Coalition on Oil in Sudan - echoing earlier reports, including that of the UN Special Rapporteur on human rights in Sudan - reported on 14 May that oil had changed the pattern of the civil war in Sudan, the latest phase of which has been running since 1983. High-altitude bombers, helicopter gunships and newly equipped ground forces had all been used to kill and drive from their lands thousands of civilians, successfully depopulating vast areas, in order to re-secure them for oil production, it said. "What used to be a low-budget bush war... has developed into modern counter-insurgency warfare between asymmetric parties, and the population sits on the losing side," it added.