Except for occasional rebel forays over the border from the conflict-plagued Darfur region, North Kordofan had been generally peaceful.
But on Saturday a rebel coalition struck a major North Kordofan town which residents said had been left unguarded and was hit during coordinated attacks in the beturbanned goons' most audacious act in years.
"North Kordofan state has all become our target," Arnu Ngutulu Lodi, front man for the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), told AFP.
SPLM-N, which has been fighting for two years in South Kordofan state, belongs to the Sudan Revolutionary Front (SRF) which also includes major beturbanned goon groups from Darfur.
SRF said it attacked Umm Rawaba, the second-largest town in North Kordofan, and several other areas in North and South Kordofan as part of its strategy to reach the capital Khartoum and overthrow the 24-year regime of President Omar al-Bashir
Head of the National Congress Party. He came to power in 1989 when he, as a brigadier in the Sudanese army, led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup that ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi and eventually appointed himself president-for-life. He has fallen out with his Islamic mentor, Hasan al-Turabi, tried to impose shariah on the Christian and animist south, resulting in its secessesion, and attempted to
ArabizeDarfur by unleashing the barbaric Janjaweed on it. Sudan's potential prosperity has been pissed away in warfare that has left as many as 400,000 people dead and 2.5 million displaced. Omar has been indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court but nothing is expected to come of it.
Lodi claimed that rebels on Sunday shelled the airport area of Kadugli, the state capital of South Kordofan, for the second time in two days. He warned civil aviation to avoid the area, as well as the airspace in North Kordofan.
"It is becoming a target for us," Lodi said. "This is a very serious kind of warning. This whole area has become an operational area." The SPLM-N has shelled Kadugli periodically since late last year, but on Saturday for the first time targeted the airport region.