Members of a break-away group from the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army-North (SPLA-N) abducted a pastor and others in North Kordofan state, Sudan on July 23, his brother said.
The Rev. Yaqob Ibrahim Tia of the Sudanese Church of Christ (SCOC) was abducted from his home in Heiban town along with his two sons, ages 17 and 20, a 15-year-old nephew and the brother of Catholic priest Fadi Ibrahim Tia, Fadi Ibrahim Tia said.
Fadi Ibrahim Tia, who is based in the area’s Nuba Mountains, said his brother, Daniel Ibrahim, was at the same house when he was abducted. The house is a short distance from Pastor Yaqob Ibrahim Tia’s church building. Fadi Ibrahim Tia is also the brother of SCOC Pastor Yaqob Ibrahim Tia.
The assailants have not demanded a ransom and appear to aim only to show their ability to destabilize the area, sources said. There have been no ransom demands in previous attacks and abductions in the past three months.
“There is a growing targeting against the church leaders in the area,” Fadi Ibrahim Tia told Morning Star News by phone.
Police have been notified of the kidnapping in the area, which was soon deserted before calm returned.
Family members were urging well-wishers and right groups to intervene to help release the abducted pastor and those with him.
Church leaders and institutions are increasingly becoming a target amid the growing conflict between break-away SPLA-N members and other militants in Heiban and other areas of the Nuba Mountains. On Friday (July 25) break-away SPLA-N militia shot and killed Episcopal Pastor Adel Idris Jongool in the Dabi administrative Unit of Heiban District.
The attack followed an attack in Heiban town on Thursday (July 23) that reportedly left an unknown number of Christians dead and other church leaders abducted. The attacks on Christians amid the armed conflict follow the killing on June 19 of a Catholic priest and one of his guards in Holy Cross parish in Kauda, South Kordofan by the same break-away militants. Another guard also was shot, survived and received hospital treatment.
The Nuba Mountains, an SPLA-N stronghold long battling Khartoum, has remained largely outside the military conflict that broke out in Sudan in April 2023, but a new frontline emerged there after the SPLA-N joined forces with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Armed factions in the Nuba Mountains have emerged that are fighting the SPLA-N, resulting in killing and displacement of civilians.
Both the RSF and the SAF are Islamist forces that have attacked displaced Christians on accusations of supporting the other’s combatants.
Sudan is 93 percent Muslim, with adherents of ethnic traditional religion 4.3 percent of the population, while Christians constitute 2.3 percent, according to Joshua Project.
The conflict between the RSF and the SAF, which had shared military rule in Sudan following an October 2021 coup, has terrorized civilians in Khartoum and elsewhere, killing tens of thousands and displacing more than 12 million people within and beyond Sudan’ borders, according to the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights (UNCHR).
The SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al-Burhan and his then-vice president, RSF leader Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, were in power when civilian parties in March 2023 agreed on a framework to re-establish a democratic transition the next month, but disagreements over military structure torpedoed final approval.
Burhan sought to place the RSF – a paramilitary outfit with roots in the Janjaweed militias that had helped former strongman Omar al-Bashir put down rebels – under the regular army’s control within two years, while Dagolo would accept integration within nothing fewer than 10 years.
Both military leaders have Islamist backgrounds while trying to portray themselves to the international community as pro-democracy advocates of religious freedom.
Sudan was ranked No. 4 among the 50 countries where it is most difficult to be a Christian in Open Doors’ 2026 World Watch List (WWL). Sudan had dropped out of the top 10 of the WWL list for the first time in six years when it first ranked No. 13 in 2021.
Following two years of advances in religious freedom in Sudan after the end of the Islamist dictatorship under Bashir in 2019, the specter of state-sponsored persecution returned with the military coup of Oct. 25, 2021. After Bashir was ousted from 30 years of power in April 2019, the transitional civilian-military government had managed to undo some sharia (Islamic law) provisions. It outlawed the labeling of any religious group “infidels” and thus effectively rescinded apostasy laws that made leaving Islam punishable by death.
With the Oct. 25, 2021 coup, Christians in Sudan feared the return of the most repressive and harsh aspects of Islamic law.
The U.S. State Department in 2019 removed Sudan from the list of Countries of Particular Concern (CPC) that engage in or tolerate “systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom” and upgraded it to a watch list. Sudan had previously been designated as a CPC from 1999 to 2018.
In December 2020, the State Department removed Sudan from its Special Watch List.
