Health centre bombed
One person was killed and 12 were injured when a Sudanese airforce plane bombed a rebel-held town in South Sudan yesterday. The Antonov aircraft dropped 18 bombs on Narus, 25 km from the Kenyan border, causing the casualties and damaging a laboratory and health centre, according to a report from George Garang of the Sudan People's Liberation Army. An SPLA commander told a press conference in Lokichogio, the main staging point for international humanitarian aid relief operations, that three people had been killed in the bombing. The wounded were brought to a hospital run by the International Red Cross. The commander, who spoke on condition his name was not published said the health centre had been flattened. He thought the target of the bombing may have been a primary school run by the Comboni Fathers. The bombing came three days before representatives of the SPLA and the government of the Sudanese President Hassan El-Bashir were to resume peace talks to end the 17 year civil war in Southern Sudan. Since June Sudan has intensified bombing in rebel-controlled areas. UN relief operations were forced to suspend their work recently because of the bombing. The rebels took up arms in 1983 to press for greater autonomy and development in the mainly black, Christian and Animist south. Since the war began at least two million have lost their lives in the fighting, diseases and famine.