Sudan’s armed forces denied they carried out the strike. South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir talked of Sudan’s “pending invasion” of its neighbour.
Violence along the poorly defined border since South Sudan’s independence in July has strained ties between the two nations. They have accused one another of backing rebel groups on their sides of the border.
A Reuters correspondent heard a large explosion in the Yida refugee camp, then saw a crater about two metres (6.6 feet) wide, an unexploded bomb wedged in the side of a school building and a white aircraft flying north. Witnesses said there were three further explosions at 3 p.m. (1200 GMT).
Yida is a camp of about 20,000 refugees from the Nuba mountains region of South Kordofan, a state north of the border where rebels have been fighting Sudan’s army since June. The camp is less than 25 km (15 miles) from the border with Sudan.
There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
Taban Deng, the governor of Unity state, accused Khartoum of carrying out the attack. “These people (Khartoum) should be taken to book. They should adhere to international laws and regulations,” Deng told reporters in Bentiu.
“The refugees need to be safe and need to be protected. They ran away from war. They should not be pursued inside the territory of South Sudan,” he said.
Al-Sawarmi Khalid, spokesman for Sudan’s armed forces, said Sudan had not bombed anywhere in South Sudan’s territory. “South Sudan is a state in the United Nations. We respect international law, and it’s impossible that we would do that,” he said.
South Sudan split off into a separate country in July after voting overwhelmingly for secession in a January referendum, the culmination of a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of war between north and south.