At least 27 people, including four children, were killed this week in attacks on two villages in Sudan's South Kordofan state, according to the Sudan Doctors Network, a local medical monitoring group that has tracked casualties throughout the country's civil war. The group said fighters from the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) — a rebel faction aligned with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces — carried out the killings in Qardud and Abu Hamama, two areas inhabited by the Otoro tribe in the Nuba Mountains.

Women were also among the wounded, the Doctors Network said in a statement issued Tuesday, warning that the violence threatened to spiral into "a broader ethnic conflict" layered on top of Sudan's grinding army-versus-RSF war. The attacks triggered a fresh wave of displacement, with residents fleeing toward the village of Abu Hitan and on to Kadugli, the state capital, according to reporting from Middle East Monitor and Al Jazeera, both of which independently confirmed the death toll and the group's account. SPLM-N did not immediately respond to the accusations.

"[These attacks constitute a] clear violation of international humanitarian law." — Sudan Doctors Network statement, Aug. 25

A war with no clean sides

The killings land in one of the most contested corners of Sudan's 2023 civil war. Since October, South, North and West Kordofan have seen escalating clashes pitting the Sudanese army against both the RSF and SPLM-N, whose leader, Abdel Aziz al-Hilu, has thrown his forces behind the RSF's rival administration. The immediate spark in Qardud and Abu Hamama traces back to a land dispute between SPLM-N-linked forces and the Otoro, a minority group among the roughly 50 ethnic communities that make up the Nuba peoples — a dispute that erupted into deadly fighting earlier this year and has now flared again.

The attack is a grim footnote to a conflict the United Nations has repeatedly called the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis. More than 59,000 people have been killed and some 14 million displaced since fighting between the army and RSF broke out in April 2023, with roughly two-thirds of Sudan's population — about 33.7 million people — now in need of humanitarian aid, according to World Health Organization figures cited in the Washington Post's wire report on the incident. Elsewhere in Kordofan this week, the army claimed a string of territorial gains and reported waves of RSF defections, even as army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan pushes a parallel, and so far unrealized, political track offering amnesty to fighters willing to lay down arms.

The Sudan Doctors Network called on the international community to pressure SPLM-N's leadership to halt attacks on civilians. No ceasefire, investigation or outside intervention had been announced in the two days since the killings were reported.