SPLM-N raid kills 27 in South Kordofan villages, doctors’ group says

The Sudan Doctors Network said on Tuesday that fighters from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North killed 27 civilians, including four children, in Qardud and Abu Hamama in South Kordofan on 25 August. Both places are Otoro settlements in the Nuba Mountains. Survivors moved toward Abu Hitan and the state capital, Kadugli.

The network called the killings an ethnic attack on unarmed people and a breach of international humanitarian law. It warned that further raids could turn the South Kordofan file from a front in the national war into a wider tribal war. It asked governments and rights groups to press SPLM-N leaders to stop and to open the road for aid. The movement had not answered the statement by Wednesday.

How this front sits in the wider war

Sudan’s war began in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. SPLM-N, a breakaway from the party that governs South Sudan, fights in the Nuba Mountains. The al-Hilu wing has fought beside the RSF in Kordofan this year. Wikipedia’s 2026 civil-war timeline records the 25 August deaths in Qardud and Abu Hamama under that wing.

Land disputes between SPLM-N units and the Otoro, a minority in the Nuba range, predates the latest raid. Clashes earlier this year already displaced families. On 15 August the same wing recaptured Kauda from Otoro fighters. The 25 August attack on two Otoro villages follows that sequence.

North, South and West Kordofan have seen heavy fighting since last October. The World Health Organization said 37 percent of Sudan’s medical facilities are out of service and that more than 900 attacks on healthcare sites were logged between January and August 2026, with at least 900 deaths. Those figures describe the system into which the Qardud wounded would have to move.

What can be verified now

The 27 dead and four children come from one medical network, not from a UN team on the ground. No independent count has been published. Displacement toward Kadugli is consistent with earlier flight lines in the Nuba Mountains. The absence of an SPLM-N reply leaves the network’s ethnic-targeting claim uncontested in public, which is not the same as a finding by a commission.

South Kordofan already carried two wars: the national one between the army and the RSF, and a local one over land and authority in the Nuba hills. A raid that kills children in named Otoro villages pulls the second war into the first. The next hard numbers to look for are a second source on the death count and whether the road from Abu Hitan to Kadugli is open for anyone carrying wounded.