14 Killed in Sudanese Government Bombing of Darfur Village

UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has condemned the Sudanese government for Sunday’s air raids against three villages in north Darfur that killed 14 civilians and injured several others. Antonov bombers targeted a market place, water installations, and a village school that was holding classes. Eleven people in the village of Shegeg Karo were killed, six of them children between the ages of five and eleven. The bombs also destroyed half of the village’s water supply.

Sunday’s attack is the deadliest by an Antonov bomber in eight years. Although it was condemned by the United Nations, UNAMID, the UN peacekeeping operation in Darfur, and the International Committee of the Red Cross were not at the village even 48 hours later. Critically injured children had to wait for over three days before receiving medical attention.

The school that was bombed Sunday had been relaunched just last year after a gap of several years, when it had stopped functioning because of the war. Darfur Diaries is an independent American project that helped raise funds to restart the school. The project came out of a film and a book of the same name by activists and filmmakers Aisha Baine, Jen Marlowe, and Adam Shapiro.

Jen Marlowe from the Darfur Diaries project joins me now from Seattle, Washington.

Jen Marlowe
Filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. she is the Co-producer of the documentary film “Darfur Diaries: A Message From Home” and co-author of the book “Darfur Diaries: Stories Of Survival.”

Jen Marlowe, Filmmaker, writer and human rights activist. she is the Co-producer of the documentary film “Darfur Diaries: A Message From Home” and co-author of the book “Darfur Diaries: Stories Of Survival.”

---

LISTEN ONLINE