KHARTOUM, June 14 (Reuters) - An air bombing campaign in Sudan&${esc.hash}39;s Southern Kordofan border state is causing "huge suffering" to civilian populations and endangering humanitarian assistance in the region, the United Nations said on Tuesday.
The northern military has been fighting southern-aligned groups it describes as rebels in the oil state for over a week, raising fears of a mounting death toll after clashes escalated to include artillery and aircraft.
"Intensive bombing by SAF in the past week is continuing in the surroundings of Kadugli and Kauda, where two jet fighters dropped 11 bombs this morning around 10:30, apparently targeting an airfield," U.N. Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) spokesman Kouider Zerrouk said, referring the north&${esc.hash}39;s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
He said two bombs fell close to the perimeter of a UNMIS compound located about 150 metres from the airfield.
"This bombing campaign is causing huge suffering to civilian populations and endangering humanitarian assistance," he said.
"We reiterate our call on the SAF, SPLA and other armed groups who are involved in this conflict to immediately allow access to humanitarian agencies and stop indiscriminate military attacks against civilians and protect them in accordance with international law."
NORTH DENIES KILLING CIVILIANS
A northern army spokesman, Al-Sawarmi Khaled, denied that Khartoum&${esc.hash}39;s military actions were killing civilians, saying fighting was only between the army and rebels. "There are not any victims from the civilian people".
Fighting in Southern Kordofan has raised tensions at a sensitive moment for Sudan, with the south set to declare independence in less than a month. The split has been complicated by a raft of unresolved issues, including where to draw the common border and how to divide oil revenues.
Southerners voted to secede in a January referendum which was promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war. That conflict killed 2 million people.
Also on Tuesday, the U.N. refugee agency urged Sudanese authorities to allow road and air access for aid workers trying to help thousands of people fleeing the fighting. [ID:nLDE75D1A9]
Humanitarian flights have been denied permission to land in the state capital Kadugli for nearly a week and roadblocks manned by armed militiamen have hampered land access, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.
"Insecurity means our operations are severely constrained and UNHCR is currently unable to reach a warehouse just 5 km (2 miles) from the U.N. peacekeeping mission&${esc.hash}39;s base in the city," spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a news briefing. Further underlining the deteriorating situation, the World Food Programme and the World Health Organisation said premises belonging to the two U.N. agencies in the area had been looted.
Fleming said the UNHCR knew of 41,000 displaced people around Kadugli and the state, but it feared that many more were fleeing their homes, mostly children and women. Aid agencies had been able to deliver food and other help only to 6,000 people.
"This is far below the number we would be able to reach if we had secure access," Fleming said. (Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, additional reporting by Fredrik Dahl, Editing by Diana Abdallah)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
