Government, rebels blame each other for Red Cross attack

The Sudanese government and the rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) have each accused the other of responsibility for killing a Red Cross pilot in an attack on an ICRC flight between Lokichoggio, northwestern Kenya, and Juba in southern Sudan, on Wednesday. The government of Sudan categorically denied that its forces had fired on the ICRC aircraft, Muhammad Dirdiery, Deputy Head of Mission at the Sudanese Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, told IRIN on Thursday. He said that the aircraft had come under fire while it was flying over rebel-held areas, and an SPLA statement accusing government forces of responsibility was “totally baseless” since there were no government forces in the area. The Sudanese government called on the international community to “condemn this barbaric act perpetrated by the SPLA”, he added. SPLM spokesman Samson Kwaje said that his movement had no forces in the area of the attack, which he placed in the Loronyo (4.39N 32.38E) area of Torit County [Eastern Equatoria], and said that the government and allied militias controlled the towns of Kapoeta, Torit and Juba, as well as the countryside around them. “The SPLM/A “therefore puts the blame squarely on the government of Sudan and its allied militias”, which comprised the so-called Equatoria Defence Forces (EDF), the (Ugandan rebel) Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and various Kapoeta-based groupings under Peter Lorot, Chief Lokipapa and Paul Langa, Kwaje added.