South Sudan Says 14 Soldiers Killed in Militia Attack in Upper Nile State
By Maram Mazen – Aug 24, 2011 5:38 AM ET
Fourteen South Sudanese soldiers were killed in attacks by militias in Upper Nile state, close to the border with Sudan, the army said.
Fifty-three fighters from the armed groups were killed in the clashes Aug. 19 and Aug. 20, which marked the biggest attack on South Sudan’s forces since it seceded from Sudan on July 9, the army spokesman, Philip Aguer, said today by phone from the capital, Juba. The attackers targeted army bases in the villages of Alal and Kaka Moro and the town of Kaka Al Tejareya, all northwest of Malakal, the state capital, Aguer said.
The attackers were “a mix of Arab elements based in Sudan and South Sudanese,” led by a Khartoum-based militia leader, Gordon Kong, and renegade General George Athor, Aguer said. The Arab fighters are based in the Al Hamra area in Sudan’s Southern Kordofan state and were backed by the Sudanese army, he said.
This year has been the most violent in what is now South Sudan since the end of a two-decade civil war between northern and southern Sudan in 2005, with 2,368 civilians dying in rebel attacks and ethnic violence as of July 9, compared with 940 last year, according to the United Nations.
A spokesman for Sudan’s army, Al-Sawarmi Khaled, didn’t answer calls to his mobile phone seeking comment on the clashes.
South Sudanese authorities have accused the Sudanese government of igniting violence in the south to disrupt the transition of the oil-rich region to an independent nation. Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir’s government rejects the accusations.
In another incident, more than 600 people were reported killed and as many as 985 injured in an Aug. 18 cattle raid by the Murle ethnic group on villages of the Lou Nuer community in Uror County in South Sudan’s Jonglei state, the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan said Aug. 22. It was also the first large-scale ethnic clash since South Sudanese independence, the UN said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Maram Mazen in Khartoum, Sudan, atmmazen.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andrew J. Barden at barden.
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