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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Sudan activists on Thursday called for the United States and the international community to intervene in a region of Sudan inaccessible to outsiders after a U.S. group released satellite photos of what they said appear to be mass graves.
Details about mass graves, aerial bombardments and other violence in the same South Kordofan region are described separately in an internal June report by Sudan's U.N. peacekeeping mission that was circulating Thursday at United Nations headquarters in New York.
The Satellite Sentinel Project images show what appear to be freshly dug sites in South Kordofan state, where Sudan's Arab military has been targeting a black ethnic minority loyal to the military of the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. A witness told the project that he saw 100 bodies or more put into one of the pits.
"The DigitalGlobe satellite images contain many of the details and hallmarks of the mass atrocities described by at least five eyewitnesses to the alleged killings," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which analyzes the project's images.
Fighting broke out in the region on June 5. Neither the U.N., outside aid groups nor journalists have access to the region, raising fears that more violence is being carried out than is known publicly.
"The problem is that we cannot confirm or deny what is going on because we cannot get into those areas," said U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Michel Bonnardeaux. "And that's even more the case now that we no longer have a mandate there."
The report was written by the human rights section of the UNMIS peacekeeping mission before its mandate expired on the eve of South Sudan's secession from the north on Saturday.
Despite its name, South Kordofan is in the north and the Sudanese government refused to renew the mandate of peacekeepers inside its territory after the south seceded.
South Sudan wants a U.N. force on its side of the border and the U.N. is currently putting together a proposed new mission for the south. The U.N. Security Council recently authorized a new 4,200-strong peacekeeping force to be temporarily deployed along the border for six months in the oil-rich Abyei region.
The unpublished U.N. peacekeeping document reported significant rights violations in the South Kordofan area, including executions, abductions, house-to-house searches and systematic destruction of homes. It said a U.N. mission staff member detained by Sudanese troops told of seeing about 150 bodies around the military compound.
Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director for Human Rights Watch, called for the world body to take quick action and "show Khartoum there is a price for expelling U.N. peacekeepers in order to pursue its horrific campaign in Southern Kordofan."
Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said it is "imperative" that a team of investigators from The Hague-based International Criminal Court travel to the graves quickly to ascertain who the dead are, how many people were killed and in what manner, and "to ward off any more mass killings." He urged the establishment of a no-fly zone
Details about mass graves, aerial bombardments and other violence in the same South Kordofan region are described separately in an internal June report by Sudan's U.N. peacekeeping mission that was circulating Thursday at United Nations headquarters in New York.
The Satellite Sentinel Project images show what appear to be freshly dug sites in South Kordofan state, where Sudan's Arab military has been targeting a black ethnic minority loyal to the military of the newly independent Republic of South Sudan. A witness told the project that he saw 100 bodies or more put into one of the pits.
"The DigitalGlobe satellite images contain many of the details and hallmarks of the mass atrocities described by at least five eyewitnesses to the alleged killings," said Nathaniel A. Raymond, of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, which analyzes the project's images.
Fighting broke out in the region on June 5. Neither the U.N., outside aid groups nor journalists have access to the region, raising fears that more violence is being carried out than is known publicly.
"The problem is that we cannot confirm or deny what is going on because we cannot get into those areas," said U.N. peacekeeping spokesman Michel Bonnardeaux. "And that's even more the case now that we no longer have a mandate there."
The report was written by the human rights section of the UNMIS peacekeeping mission before its mandate expired on the eve of South Sudan's secession from the north on Saturday.
Despite its name, South Kordofan is in the north and the Sudanese government refused to renew the mandate of peacekeepers inside its territory after the south seceded.
South Sudan wants a U.N. force on its side of the border and the U.N. is currently putting together a proposed new mission for the south. The U.N. Security Council recently authorized a new 4,200-strong peacekeeping force to be temporarily deployed along the border for six months in the oil-rich Abyei region.
The unpublished U.N. peacekeeping document reported significant rights violations in the South Kordofan area, including executions, abductions, house-to-house searches and systematic destruction of homes. It said a U.N. mission staff member detained by Sudanese troops told of seeing about 150 bodies around the military compound.
Philippe Bolopion, United Nations director for Human Rights Watch, called for the world body to take quick action and "show Khartoum there is a price for expelling U.N. peacekeepers in order to pursue its horrific campaign in Southern Kordofan."
Samuel Totten, a genocide scholar at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, said it is "imperative" that a team of investigators from The Hague-based International Criminal Court travel to the graves quickly to ascertain who the dead are, how many people were killed and in what manner, and "to ward off any more mass killings." He urged the establishment of a no-fly zone