In the ancient hills of South Kordofan, where the Otoro people have long made their home, a rebel faction has added fresh grief to a land already saturated with it — killing 27 civilians, among them four children, in attacks that medical workers warn may signal the ignition of ethnic conflict layered atop an already devastating civil war. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, aligned with the paramilitary RSF, has turned older wounds — land disputes, tribal tensions — into new massacres, reminding the world that Sudan's unraveling is not one catastrophe but many, each one deepening the
Rebel group kills 27 in Sudan's Kordofan, medical network warns of ethnic conflict
27 people killed including four children; women wounded; large-scale civilian displacement toward Abu Hitan and Kadugli areas.
targeting unarmed civilians on ethnic grounds is a clear violation
Mark
Why does the SPLM-N's alignment with the RSF matter here? They're already fighting in a civil war—what difference does the political choice make?
Mimi
It matters because it changes who has resources and who has permission. When al-Hilu aligned with the RSF, he gained access to weapons, logistics, territory. But he also inherited the RSF's enemies and the RSF's methods. The Otoro aren't fighting the civil war—they're caught between a rebel group that now has state-like power and their own need to survive.
Mark
The source mentions land disputes as the root cause. How does that connect to what's happening now?
Mimi
Land disputes in the Nuba Mountains are ancient and real. But they've been weaponized. When SPLM-N forces move through Otoro territory, they're not just passing through—they're asserting control. The killings aren't random. They're a way of saying: this land is ours now. The ethnic framing makes it permanent.
Mark
The Sudan Doctors Network warns of ethnic conflict. Do they mean this could spread beyond South Kordofan?
Mimi
They mean it could become the dominant logic of the war. Right now, the civil war is framed as army versus RSF. But if ethnic grievances become the organizing principle—if other groups see what happened to the Otoro and mobilize along similar lines—you get fragmentation. You get dozens of conflicts instead of one. That's harder to stop and harder to survive.
Mark
What does it mean that women were wounded in these attacks?
Mimi
It means the violence wasn't tactical. It wasn't soldiers fighting soldiers. It was indiscriminate. Women, children, unarmed people. That's the language of ethnic cleansing, even if it's not being called that yet. It's the language of trying to erase a presence.
Mark
With 14 million displaced and two-thirds needing aid, how much worse can this get?
Mimi
Much worse. Those numbers are already catastrophic. But they're still people in motion, people trying to survive. If ethnic conflict becomes the organizing principle, displacement becomes permanent. People stop moving toward safety and start moving toward their own group. Camps become segregated. Aid becomes impossible to distribute. The humanitarian system collapses entirely.
El Pulso
- Twenty-seven people, including four children and several women, were killed in rebel attacks on Otoro tribal settlements in the Nuba Mountains, with the Sudan Doctors Network naming SPLM-N as responsible.
- Thousands of survivors fled toward Abu Hitan and Kadugli, a displacement wave that signals not just fear but the collapse of any sense of safety in the region.
- The SPLM-N is no isolated militia — its leader has formally aligned with the RSF and joined a parallel government, weaving this local violence into the fabric of Sudan's wider civil war.
- Doctors and humanitarian observers warn that what began as land disputes between the SPLM-N and the Otoro tribe is now crossing a threshold into ethnic targeting, a breach of international humanitarian law.
- With two-thirds of Sudan's 50 million people already requiring humanitarian aid, international pressure on SPLM-N leadership is being urgently demanded before localized ethnic violence becomes yet another self-sustaining front.
In the ancient hills of South Kordofan, where the Otoro people have long made their home, a rebel faction has added fresh grief to a land already saturated with it — killing 27 civilians, among them four children, in attacks that medical workers warn may signal the ignition of ethnic conflict layered atop an already devastating civil war. The Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North, aligned with the paramilitary RSF, has turned older wounds — land disputes, tribal tensions — into new massacres, reminding the world that Sudan's unraveling is not one catastrophe but many, each one deepening the others.
On Tuesday, Sudan's medical community issued a grave accusation: the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North had killed 27 people — including four children and multiple women — in the settlements of Qardud and Abu Hamama, deep in the Nuba Mountains of South Kordofan. The victims belonged to the Otoro, a minority people who have inhabited these hills for generations.
The attacks triggered a mass flight. Thousands of survivors moved toward Abu Hitan and Kadugli, seeking distance from the violence. The Sudan Doctors Network did not mince its language: this was not incidental killing but the ethnic targeting of unarmed civilians, a violation of international humanitarian law, and a warning sign of something potentially far worse to come.
The SPLM-N is not a peripheral actor. Its leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has aligned his forces with Sudan's Rapid Support Forces — one of the two main combatants in a civil war that has already killed at least 59,000 people and displaced 14 million since April 2023 — and has joined the RSF-led parallel government claiming authority over parts of the country.
Yet the violence in South Kordofan has its own older roots. Tensions between the SPLM-N and the Otoro did not begin with the civil war; they grew from land disputes that had already produced fighting earlier this year. The latest killings represent an escalation of that local conflict into something the doctors' network fears could consume the wider region.
Sudan's catastrophe has always been more than one war. With roughly 33.7 million people now requiring humanitarian assistance, the killings in South Kordofan are a warning that the country's unraveling may produce not a single conflict to resolve, but many overlapping ones — each with its own grievances, each making recovery harder to imagine.
On Tuesday, Sudan's medical community issued a stark accusation: a rebel faction had slaughtered 27 people in the remote hills of South Kordofan, among them four children. The Sudan Doctors Network named the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM-N) as responsible for the killings in Qardud and Abu Hamama, two settlements in the Nuba Mountains where the Otoro people, a minority group, have lived for generations.
The attacks sent thousands fleeing. Survivors and the displaced moved toward Abu Hitan and Kadugli, seeking safety in numbers and distance. The medical network's statement carried an unmistakable warning: what had begun as violence was threatening to metastasize into something larger—an ethnic conflict that could consume the region.
The SPLM-N is not a rogue militia operating in isolation. The group is a breakaway faction of South Sudan's ruling party, and its leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has made a deliberate choice: to align his fighters with Sudan's Rapid Support Forces, the paramilitary group that has become one of the two main combatants in Sudan's civil war. That war, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the RSF, has already killed at least 59,000 people and displaced some 14 million. Al-Hilu has gone further still, joining the RSF-led parallel government that now claims authority over parts of Sudan.
But the violence in South Kordofan carries a different character. The tensions between the SPLM-N and the Otoro people did not begin with the civil war. They grew from something older and more local: disputes over land. Earlier this year, fighting had already erupted between SPLM-N forces and the Otoro tribe. Now, with the latest killings, that simmering conflict has boiled over. The Sudan Doctors Network was explicit about what it saw: the targeting of unarmed civilians on the basis of ethnicity. That, the organization stated, is a clear breach of international humanitarian law.
The medical group called on the international community to pressure SPLM-N leadership to stop. Among the wounded in the latest attacks were women, adding another dimension to the toll. Yet the broader context is one of near-total humanitarian collapse. According to the World Health Organization, two-thirds of Sudan's population—roughly 33.7 million people—now requires humanitarian assistance. The country is fractured, its institutions failing, its people scattered.
What began as a civil war between two military forces has become something more diffuse and more dangerous: a patchwork of overlapping conflicts, each with its own logic, its own grievances, its own capacity for violence. The killings in South Kordofan are a warning that the next phase of Sudan's unraveling may not be a single conflict at all, but many conflicts, each feeding the others, each making the humanitarian catastrophe deeper and harder to reverse.
Citas Notables
Targeting unarmed civilians on ethnic grounds constitutes a clear violation of international humanitarian law— Sudan Doctors Network
Continued violations threatened to turn the conflict in South Kordofan into a broader ethnic conflict— Sudan Doctors Network
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