Sudan forces threaten UN flights: US envoy

UNITED NATIONS (AFP) - Sudanese forces have threatened to shoot down UN flights over South Kordofan state where its troops are hunting and killing southern Sudan followers, the US ambassador to the United Nations said Monday.

The US envoy, Susan Rice, also said the alleged rounding up and killing of people by north Sudanese forces in the state's main city could amount to "crimes against humanity."

There has been heavy fighting in South Kordofan, which is in northern Sudan, since June 5 between the Khartoum government's army and allied militias against troops aligned to south.

Rice said up to 75,000 people had fled their homes and aid groups estimate that hundreds have been killed there but the United Nations says its mission, UNMIS, has been refused access to the state.

Sudanese forces "have threatened to shoot down UNMIS air patrols, they have taken control of the airport in Kadugli and refused landing rights to UNMIS flights," Rice told a UN Security Council debate.

The UN mission in the state is now "dangerously low" on food and an estimated 10,000 people have gathered around the UN compound in Kadugli, she added.

"The reports my government has been receiving of the ongoing fighting are horrifying both because of the scope of human rights abuses and because of the the ethnic dimensions of the conflict," Rice said.

She highlighted reports that pro-Khartoum forces had "arrested and allegedly executed" sympathizers of southern Sudan.

"We have received further allegations, not yet corroborated, but so alarming that I must mention them, that the Sudanese Armed Forces are arming elements of the local population and placing mines in areas of Kadugli," Rice added.

"Security services and military forces have reportedly detained and summarily executed local authorities, ethnic rivals, medical personnel and others.

"These acts could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity," Rice said.

The US ambassador also raised concerns that the Sudan People's Liberation Army, from southern Sudan, had deployed north of the 1956 border between the two sides in violation of a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

The 2005 accord ended two decades of civil war which left two million dead.