By George Conger, Anglican Ink.
A Sudanese Anglican priest has been killed and scores of Christians abducted in the Nuba Mountains, in what local church leaders describe as a deliberate strike at the heart of their ministry rather than a random casualty of tribal gunplay.
Rebel fighters attacked the Dabbi/Debi area of Heiban County in South Kordofan late last week, targeting clergy and lay leaders of the Episcopal Church of Sudan (ECS) amid a wider mutiny by Otoro tribal forces aligned with a break‑away faction of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army–North (SPLA‑N).
The Rev. Adel Idris Jongool, a priest of the ECS in Debi, was abducted and killed after militants stormed the community near Korkel Theological College, the Anglican seminary serving both dioceses in the Nuba Mountains. Debi hosts the seminary that trains clergy for Kadugli and Heiban, and Fr. Jongool was among the local priests who met visiting mission partners there earlier this year. Area sources report that scores of Christians were seized, with 32 captives released in stages while others remain missing. The attack followed a separate incident in nearby Kauda in June in which a Catholic priest and a church guard were shot dead after protesting the looting of medical supplies, underscoring a pattern of clergy being singled out when they insist that guns and thieves respect the church’s charity.
The murder of Fr. Jongool comes against the backdrop of a church that has stubbornly flourished under bombardment and blockade. Since the Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan were divided in 2017, the Sudanese province has six dioceses, with Kadugli and Heiban covering the Nuba region where most of Sudan’s Christians live. When the Rt. Rev. Andudu Adam Elnail became Bishop of Kadugli in 2002, he oversaw roughly 5,000 Anglicans in ten congregations; today there are more than 60,000 Anglicans worshipping in over 150 churches, about 90 in Kadugli and 50 in the newly formed Diocese of Heiban, reports Sudan Church Partners (Pax Dei for Nuba).