Satellites Spot Mass Graves in Sudan

And group accuses the Sudanese Red Crescent Society of digging them
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 24, 2011 9:44 AM CDT
Satellites Spot Mass Graves in Sudan
In this Digital Globe satellite images from the Satellite Sentinel Project Thursday, released July 14, 2011, a site in Kadugli town in a sealed-off region of Sudan appears to be a mass grave.   (AP Photo/DigitalGlobe)

The Satellite Sentinel Project, an activist group founded by George Clooney, says it has evidence of a number of mass graves in Sudan’s Nuba Mountains—and it thinks the Sudanese Red Crescent dug them. Based on satellite images and witness statements, the SSP has concluded that as many as eight mass graves have been dug in the troubled region since June, including two spotted in the past week, the New York Times reports.

The Sudanese Red Crescent, the national branch of the Red Cross, acknowledges collecting bodies in the region, and that it was given machinery by the government to bury them. But it denies dumping them in mass graves, and says it was joined on the mission by a “criminal investigation team.” A Sudanese government spokesman, meanwhile, said the pictures “do not show the truth. Behind them I think it is the rebels that falsify such rumors, to bring the international community to intervene in this domestic crisis.” (More Sudan stories.)

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