Sudanese priest killed by militant group amid ongoing conflict
An armed group demanding access to medical supplies shot and killed a Catholic priest in the Sudanese town of Kauda, in the Nuba Mountains region of South Kordofan state, after he reported the group to authorities and attempted to move the supplies before they could return.
Fr. Youhana Al-Amin was killed the morning of June 19, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reports.
On June 18, armed men entered his church and demanded the keys to the medical supply storage. They took what they could and said they would return for the rest. Al-Amin reported the incident and began moving the remaining supplies.
The men returned the following morning, around 10 a.m. They shot and killed him along with one of his guards. A second guard was wounded but escaped and is receiving treatment at a hospital.
Violence in the Nuba Mountains had been escalating for six weeks before the killing, with armed and tribal forces active in the area. Many religious leaders had left. Al-Amin had chosen to stay with his congregation.
Fr. John Gbemboyo Joseph Mbikoyezu, a pastor who knew Al-Amin, told Crux Now that the slain priest stood for the many others who had lost their lives in the Sudan conflict. He urged the global Church to pray for the end of the war and for relief from the atrocities.
Violence in Sudan has intensified on multiple fronts. Sudan’s civil war began in April 2023 between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF).
The war grew out of a power struggle between the SAF, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti, following the October 2021 military coup that ousted Sudan’s transitional civilian government. Tensions between the two generals escalated into open fighting after negotiations to integrate the RSF into the regular army collapsed.
In October 2025, the RSF seized El Fasher, a city in the Darfur region, from the Sudanese army. Media reports and satellite imagery confirmed mass killings in the city, including an attack on a hospital in which about 460 people were shot and killed.
The United Nations estimates more than 13 million people have been displaced since the war began, including 8.6 million internally displaced, making Sudan the site of the world’s largest displacement crisis.
James Wani, country director of Christian Aid in South Sudan, previously said more than 1 million returnees and refugees had reached South Sudan since the start of the conflict.
On Dec. 25, 2025, an SAF drone strike in the Biyam Jald area of South Kordofan killed at least 11 Christians traveling to Christmas celebrations at the Episcopal Church of Sudan in Julud, wounding at least 18 others.
Two earlier SAF strikes preceded the Christmas attack. A Nov. 29 drone strike on a medical clinic in the Kumi area of South Kordofan reportedly killed 12 people and injured 19, including women and children. A Dec. 5 attack on Ghadeer locality, Kalogi, killed more than 10 children ages 5 to 7 inside a kindergarten.
Christian advocacy group Open Doors recorded increases in Christians killed, sexually assaulted and whose homes and businesses were attacked in Sudan in its 2025 World Watch List report.
The report stated that churches had been shelled, looted and occupied by warring parties and that Christians were trapped in the chaos and unable to flee.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has called on the RSF to end and prevent abuses against civilians, saying RSF commanders were bound by obligations under international humanitarian law to protect civilians and ensure the passage of humanitarian aid.
