An angry mob has set ablaze a church frequented by Southern Sudanese in the capital
of Sudan. The Saturday night incident appeared to be part of the fallout from ongoing
hostilities between Sudan and South Sudan over control of an oil town on their ill-defined
border. One newspaper, Al-Sahafah, said the church in Khartoum's Al-Jiraif
district was part of a complex that included a school and dormitories. Ethiopian refugees
living in the Sudanese capital also used the church. Sudan and South Sudan have
been drawing closer to a full scale war in recent months over the unresolved issues
of sharing oil revenues and a disputed border. Last week, South Sudanese troops
seized Heglig, which the southerners call Panthou, sending Sudanese troops fleeing.
The Khartoum government later claimed to have regained the town. The witnesses
and several newspapers said a mob of several hundreds shouting insults at southerners
torched the church. Fire engines could not put out the fire, they added. The mostly
Christian and animist South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011, some six years after
a peace deal ended more than two decades of war between the two sides. But tens of
thousands of southerners remain in Sudan, a legacy of the civil war that drove hundreds
of thousands of them to seek relative safety in the north of what was then a single
Sudanese nation.