Government bombs NGO compounds

Two people were killed and about a dozen injured when a Sudanese government aircraft bombed a hospital compound of the American NGO, Samaritan’s Purse, in the rebel-held town of Lui, 130 km northwest of Juba last week. The agency’s Nairobi-based logistics coordinator Andrew Kinyanjui, quoted by the Associated Press agency (AP), said it was the first time the hospital - with a staff of 82 - had been bombed. The attack took place on the deadline day for NGOs to sign the SRRA’s Memorandum of Understanding. Samaritan’s Purse was one of those NGOs outside the OLS coordination body that signed the agreement. The head of Samaritan’s Purse Franklin Graham - son of the evangelist preacher Rev Billy Graham - said the US was not doing enough to stop President Omar al-Bashir’s government waging war on southern Sudan, AP added.

A government Antonov bomber also bombed the compound of the Irish NGO, Concern, in Yirol on Saturday, the agency’s Sudan programme manager Ann O’Mahony told IRIN on Wednesday. The attack, in which two bombs hit the compound, was the first on Yirol, in the southern Lakes region of Bahr el Ghazal, in over a year. However Concern staff were worried that Antonovs had again flown overhead on Tuesday and Wednesday. Yambio and Maridi, in a line between Yirol and the DRC border, had also been bombed in recent days, O’Mahoney added. She said she did not believe Concern or any other NGOs were being targeted for having signed the Memorandum of Understanding. She considered that the bombings were merely to terrorise the population generally.