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).

This expansion has taken place under intermittent air raids by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which invaded the Nuba Mountains in 2011 and spent the next decade trying to bomb the region into submission after their ground campaign collapsed.  The Nuba, whose lands contain much of Sudan’s mineral wealth, were excluded from the South Sudan peace settlement and have since been punished for refusing to accept Khartoum’s terms.  Even now, in the latest iteration of Sudan’s civil war between SAF and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the Nuba Christians find themselves squeezed between Islamist armed camps who alternately accuse them of loyalty to the other side.

The immediate conflict that claimed Fr. Jongool’s life began not with theology but with a boundary dispute, Sudan Church Partners reports.  Earlier this year, fighting broke out between the Otoro and Shwaia tribes over land, then spiralled into wider clashes involving the larger Tira and other groups, with Kauda—the regional capital—suffering extensive looting that drove humanitarian agencies such as Samaritan’s Purse from the area.

According to reports shared with Anglican.Ink, about 1,500 fighters, many drawn from SPLA‑N ranks, mutinied and withdrew into the mountains, setting up roadblocks and launching raids while a shrinking hard core continued attacks even as tribal leaders tried to call them off.  Local observers believe this splinter group is receiving support and weapons from Khartoum, which has long used tribal militias and paramilitary forces to discredit opponents and keep contested areas such as the Nuba in permanent disorder.  In this fog of engineered chaos, clergy are seen as dangerous precisely because they insist on preaching peace in communities the gunmen need divided.

Both Nuba dioceses have chosen the more difficult path of ministry not from a safe distance, but in the line of fire.  The Rt. Rev. Andudu, who survived a SAF assassination campaign only because he happened to be in the United States receiving treatment for newly diagnosed diabetes when troops burned his office and residence in Kadugli in 2011, now shuttles between his diocese and the U.S., spending the dry season in the mountains and the rainy season abroad.  From exile he has coordinated relief for displaced believers and, more recently, led a multi‑denominational peace committee tasked with coaxing warring tribes toward ceasefire, noted Sudan Church Partners.

The Rt. Rev. Elsir Hassan Kuku, consecrated as Bishop of Heiban when some forty congregations were spun out of Kadugli in 2024, has been one of the few leaders trusted by Otoro fighters holed up in the hills, Sudan Church Partners told Anglican.Ink.  Writing to partner agencies this week, Fr. Kuku said the church had “begun renewed efforts in our peace and reconciliation programme,” engaging all parties in the conflict and asking Christians abroad to sustain them in prayer and practical support as they labour for “peace, reconciliation, and restoration” in communities now torn not only between tribes but within congregations themselves.

Sudan Church Partners (SCP), an ACNA‑affiliated mission agency based in the United States, has become a lifeline for Nuba Anglicans who are otherwise largely ignored by the international system.  SCP supports Grace Secondary School—the only functioning full‑campus secondary school in the region—as well as evangelists, prison ministry, Mothers’ Union projects, and diocesan staff for Kadugli, and helped underwrite the founding of the Diocese of Heiban’s cathedral and offices.  Working alongside organisations such as Anglican Aid (Australia), Relay Trust (UK), and the Anglican Relief and Development Fund, SCP recently assisted IDPs arriving in Nuba‑run camps with food and shelter materials after the latest wave of fighting, in a region where the United Nations has no sustained presence.

Meanwhile, international attention remains fixed on Khartoum and the national power struggle between the SAF’s Gen. Abdelfattah al‑Burhan and RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo—two Islamists eager to sell themselves abroad as champions of democracy and religious freedom while their forces terrorise civilians and pummel Christian communities.  Open Doors now ranks Sudan as the fourth‑worst country in the world in which to be a Christian, a grim improvement on previous years that owes more to renewed repression after the 2021 military coup than to any surge in church‑growth enthusiasm from the regime.

For the Christians of the Nuba Mountains, those rankings are not an abstraction; they are measured in bomb craters, burned rectories, and now the blood of clergy such as Fr. Jongool whose only crime was to shepherd a flock the gunmen have decided must once again be driven from its pasture.