US "outrage" at latest bombing of civilians

The US government on Tuesday issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the government of Sudan's weekend bombing of a food aid distribution site in Akuem, Bahr al-Ghazal State, southern Sudan. "The United States is outraged by the Government of Sudan's aerial strike against a civilian target in the south of the country," said US State Department spokesman Richard Boucher. "They have broken Khartoum's pledge to the US Special Envoy for Peace in Sudan, Senator John Danforth, to end bombings of civilian targets for a period of four weeks," he added. The humanitarian community in Sudan on Tuesday sent a 'note verbale' to the Sudanese government in Khartoum, protesting strongly about the incident, aid officials told IRIN on Wednesday. The Sudanese air force dropped the bombs on a United Nations' World Food Programme (WFP) emergency drop site only three hours after a food relief airdrop, and while civilians were still on the ground collecting the food, Boucher stated. An Antonov aircraft dropped six bombs on the town of Akuem at 5pm local time (1400 GMT) on Saturday, with three of the bombs landing directly on the WFP food drop zone and three falling in the surrounding area, according to diplomatic and humanitarian sources. Six government bombs killed two Sudanese children at the food distribution in Akuem, despite the fact that WFP had received flight clearance from the Sudanese government for the food-aid drop, and its flight had originated from a government airfield, Boucher said. "This horrific and senseless attack indicates that the pattern of deliberately targeting civilians and humanitarian operations continues," he added. Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il told journalists in Nairobi on Wednesday that, although he did not have confirmation that the attack had taken place, he would start an investigation into the reports. "We are going to investigate and [find out] if it has been done or not, and if it has been done and it is intentional, then we will bring those who did it into court," he said. The WFP on Wednesday "strongly condemned" the Akuem bombing and the subsequent death of two children, and injury of another 10 to 12 people, after the agency had just finished distributing 77 mt of food relief to 18,000 people suffering from drought and insecurity. "The loss of innocent lives, particularly children, is totally unacceptable," said Abdoulaye Balde, WFP operations manager for Southern Sudan. "The fact that the incident coincided with humanitarian operations on the ground and endangered potentially a greater number of civilians and relief staff, makes the act even more of a concern," he added. Saturday's attack comes at a time when the US is working with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) and the Sudanese government on ways to end attacks on civilians - a crucial unresolved issue in the new initiative on Sudan by the US and Danforth, and an important building block in efforts to end the Sudan conflict, according to Washington. With Danforth unable to reach agreement with Khartoum on civilian bombings, "the Akuem attack underlines the importance of resolving this issue as soon as possible and of setting up a viable verification mechanism to prevent this type of tragedy from being repeated in the future", Boucher stated. Isma'il said that he had begun negotiations with the US over the possible deployment of international observers during a recent visit to Washington which ended on Sunday. "The government of Sudan is fully behind full protection of civilians and accepting an international observer," he said. "We said let us avoid intentional targeting of civilians. Not only from bombing, but from shelling, from mining, from sending grenades," he added. "It is not the policy of the Sudan government to target civilians." Some of the civilian injuries on Saturday occurred inside the compound of the nongovernmental health agency Medecins Sans Frontieres (France) compound, which was hit by shrapnel, according to WFP. The UN food agency does not itself maintain a permanent team in Akuem because of the insecurity prevailing in the area. Akuem has been affected by serious drought and instability, hampering the local population's ability to produce enough food to survive, WFP said on Wednesday. The village also hosts about 3,000 people from Aweil West, northern Bahr al-Ghazal, who frequently flee their homes due to insecurity. The weekend attack is the fourth on Akuem since May 2001, the last bombardment having taken place in November 2001, when a number of people were killed, WFP added. A series of heavy bombings over three separate days also took place in Mangayath, Bahr al-Ghazal, in October, while food relief operations were under way. WFP teams were in the process of distributing relief food to some 20,000 civilians at the time. That incident, too, was deplored at the highest levels, including by UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Kenzo Oshima, who called for the government of Sudan "to refrain from any further military action targeting civilians."