Up to 500,000 may need food aid in Sudan

The World Food Program estimates that as many as a half million people could be forced to flee Sudan if the government in Khartoum does not allow humanitarian aid into the country, while a top US official says a humanitarian crisis is looming.

World Food Program deputy executive director Ramiro Lopes da Silva said WFP is in talks with the government in Khartoum to allow its aid workers into the states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, (more…)

South Sudan minister shot dead

Minister of Cooperatives and Rural Development in south Sudan government Jimmy Lemi was shot dead in his office in Juba, capital of south Sudan, on Wednesday, a local correspondent told Xinhua. (more…)

US to remove Sudan from terror list

The United States on Monday held out the prospect of reducing its dwindling list of state sponsors of terrorism by yet another country, with both President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton saying Sudan could soon be removed from the list. (more…)

South Sudanese in most states back independence, poll

South Sudanese voted overwhelmingly to declare independence from the north in a referendum, according to officials in seven out of the region’s ten states polled by Reuters Wednesday. (more…)

More votes and more deaths, in southern Sudan, report

Ten civilians were killed along Sudan’s increasingly tense north-south border, Sudanese officials said Tuesday, as voting continued for a third day in a landmark referendum on southern Sudan’s independence. (more…)

Independence referendum begins in Southern Sudan

People in Southern Sudan lined up to vote Sunday in an independence referendum that is likely to create the world’s newest nation, about five years after the end of a brutal civil war.

Nearly four million people in Africa’s largest country are registered to vote, with balloting running until next Saturday. They’re being asked to mark a simple illustrated ballot, showing a single hand and the word “separation,” as well as two hands clasped together with the word “unity.” (more…)

Can Sudan’s oil feed north and south?

Oil has fueled conflict in Sudan, and rapid growth in the northern heartland of Africa’s biggest country, as the 4×4s purring past shining skyscrapers in the capital, Khartoum, suggest.

But now southerners seem certain to choose independence in Sunday’s referendum – and when they go they will take most of Sudan’s oil with them. (more…)

Southern Sudan: Unity or Secession?

Sunday’s referendum in southern Sudan gives voters a choice between staying united with the rest of Sudan or becoming an independent country.

The poll was agreed to in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended Sudan’s 21-year north-south civil war. (more…)

Sudan President Bashir to visit south before referendum

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir is to visit the capital of Southern Sudan, Juba, five days before a referendum is held on whether it will secede.

Mr Bashir will meet the president of the semi-autonomous south, Salva Kiir. The two men were on opposing sides during the two-decades-long civil war. (more…)

Israel deports 150 southern Sudanese migrants

Israel has flown home 150 illegal Sudanese migrants in a secret operation that was the largest such deportation from the Jewish state, an Israeli official confirmed Tuesday.

The group, which left late Monday, was the biggest to leave since Israel began quietly deporting hundreds of African migrants a few years ago. The deportations are part of an attempt to stanch the influx of Africans slipping across Israel’s porous southern border with Egypt. (more…)