Culpeper relief team heads to Sudan

An aid team from Culpeper-based Persecution Project is on its way to southern Sudan in the wake of a bombing that left six children dead and others critically wounded.

On Sept. 27, a man dressed as a soldier detonated a hand grenade in a church, according to Brad Phillips, president of the Persecution Project Foundation.

PPF is a nonprofit group that has worked the past decade in Africa to bring relief and spiritual outreach to victims of war, genocide and religious persecution.

An exact motive for the incident was still unknown as of Monday.

"We are still trying to figure out if it was an accident or a suicide bomber - we don't know for sure," Phillips said. "What we do know is a man who was in a military uniform walked into a church service two Thursdays ago and there was an explosion that killed him and six children.

"He could have been anybody dressed up in that uniform."

The fatal explosion occurred in Khorfullus Town in a church that is part of the newly formed Faith Evangelical Baptist Association of Churches in Sudan. Persecution Project has worked with other FEBAC churches in southern Sudan's Upper Nile region, Phillips said, and it was a friend from this area, Pastor Francis Ayul, who contacted Phillips about the bombing.

Ayul did not know if it was religiously motivated.

"We cannot speculate now, but many believe so. Our main focus now is to save the wounded and console the families of these new martyrs," he told Phillips.

Phillips said Persecution Project workers would likely begin their journey to the northeastern African country today to investigate what happened.

"We are trying to get them up there now," he said Monday afternoon, "to visit with the survivors in the hospital and try to get some information from witnesses."

In the meantime, the Culpeper-based nonprofit group has funded surgery for the wounded and other medical expenses.

Though a two-and-a-half-year old peace agreement is supposed to be in place in southern Sudan, violence continues in that part of the country and countrywide.

Two days after the grenade explosion, 10 African Union peacekeepers were killed and 10 others wounded in a rebel attack in Darfur in the western part of the country. According to the Associated Press, attacks were waged in the same area as recently as Monday.

More than 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million displaced from Darfur since the fighting began four years ago, according to AP data.

In the past two decades, ethnic cleansing in southern Sudan has left 2 million dead and another 4 million displaced, according to the Persecution Project. Fighting in Sudan has waged for at least three decades between the Muslim north and the predominantly Christian south.

Agents of the Islamist government have often backed the fighting.

The average American can help the situation by putting pressure on the U.S. government to take action, said Phillips, who recently moved back to Virginia after living with his family in Kenya.

"Tell your representatives in government that you are not happy with the genocide, the killing and raping of woman and children," added Phillips, who attended a rally Saturday in South Carolina on the steps of the state capital to send that message.

"Take a look at your investments and make sure the money you are investing is not being used to invest in companies that are doing business with the butchers of Khartoum. People can make a difference."

Allison Brophy Champion can be reached at 825-0771 ext. 101 or

Want to know more-
The Persecution Project Foundation is a Culpeper-based group that has provided crisis relief and spiritual guidance to victims of civil war, genocide and religious persecution throughout Africa. A team from the foundation is traveling to southern Sudan today to look into a grenade explosion that killed six children and wounded numerous others. Persecution Project has already paid for surgery for the wounded and other medical expenses. For information about the group, call (888) 201-5245 or go online to persecutionproject.org.