A video purporting to show the Sudanese army bombarding a village in Sudan's Nuba mountains was posted to YouTube Sunday. The graphic footage includes an image of a decapitated child.
The Nov. 17 attack came in the midst of stalled negotiations between the Khartoum government and the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N) over a children's polio vaccination campaign, according to the Paris-based Sudan Tribune news website.
"To all those who continue to appease the Khartoum regime and ignore the solid facts on the ground, the Khartoum regime is targeting civilian populations in Sudan, committing war crimes, and killing the very children who need to be vaccinated," Yasir Arman, Secretary General of the SPLM-N, said in a statement.
The Sudanese government and the SPLM-N have been locked into a bloody conflict for years, in which the Sudanese army has resorted to a massive bombing campaign to exhaust both the rebels and the population.
As noted in an earlier HuffPost report:
According to [Nuba Reports, a media organization formed to draw attention to the humanitarian crisis in Sudan], Sudanese planes have dropped nearly 1,200 bombs on civilian targets since April 2012, killing more than 50 people. While the government says its campaign targets fighters, Nuba Reports' tallies indicate that only 100 of the more than 1,000 bombs landed near a military target. Most of the attacks are carried out with Antonovs, old Russian cargo planes loaded with explosive devices.
According to the International Crisis Group, more than 700,000 villagers are believed to be affected by the violence and more than 450,000 people have fled their homes.