51 killed in revenge attack as tribal conflicts escalate in South Sudan
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Members of the Murle community attacked a community called Duk Padiet in Jonglei state Monday evening, said Philip Thon Leek Deng, a member of parliament who spoke from South Sudan‘s capital of Juba.
Some of the residents of Duk Padiet – who are from the Lou Nuer tribe – fought back, killing an unspecified number of attackers, “but the majority of the 47 killed are young children who could not run, old women, old men, disabled people,” said Deng, who is a Lou Nuer. There was no immediate confirmation of his casualty tolls.
In a statement, US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor acknowledged the escalation in violence in recent weeks and urged all sides to refrain from further attacks.
“We welcome the South Sudanese government’s launch of an investigation into these attacks and its deployment of additional military and police forces to the region, and we support efforts by the UN and non-governmental organisations to provide urgently-needed humanitarian assistance to those who fled the fighting,” the statement said.
The Monday attack is the latest in a series of raids carried out by the Murle against the neighbouring Lou Nuer community in Jonglei. Similar attacks took place over the past week in neighbouring Uror and Akobo counties. With the attacks in Duk County, the death toll since the revenge attacks began Jan 8 has risen to more than 120.
The revenge attacks are the latest in a long-running cycle of violence between the two communities. Officials say the attacks are being carried out in retaliation for raids by the Lou Nuer tribe on Murle communities in Pibor county in late December and early January.
No reliable death toll has yet been released from those attacks, but the United Nations estimates that as many as 60,000 people were affected by the violence and are in need of assistance. One Murle official said more than 3,000 Murle died in the December-January attacks. That toll has not been corroborated by the UN or central government.
Deng said the residents of Duk County are fleeing the county in anticipation of an impending second attack.
“What happened in Duk Padyiet is not the end,” he said. “We are expecting another attack this evening from similar forces because they did not take cattle. They attacked the town. There were no cattle in the town.”
The United Nations has recently launched operations in Jonglei to reach the tens of thousands affected by the violence. South Sudan has deployed 3,000 soldiers to the area in an attempt to quell the ethnic clashes.
Cattle raids between the Lou Nuer and Murle have gone on for decades. The 23-year civil war between the newly independent South Sudan and its northern neighbour, Sudan, flooded this region with weapons.
The crisis in Jonglei is just one of a host of problems in one of the world’s most underdeveloped nations, which gained independence last July. Besides the 60,000 displaced in Jonglei, the country is also hosting more than 80,000 refugees who have fled rebellions in neighbouring Sudan. Thousands of South Sudanese have returned from Sudan since independence and thousands more have been displaced by the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army, a rebel group plaguing Central Africa.
South Sudan attackers kill 51 in clashes: governor
By Hannah McNeish (AFP) –
JUBA — Gunmen killed at least 51 people in the latest ethnic clashes in South Sudan’s troubled Jonglei state, the region’s governor said Tuesday.
“The whole night (Monday) they burned the town… 51 are confirmed dead and now we have 22 (injured) evacuated to Juba,” said Jonglei governor Kuol Manyang.
Armed men stormed the village of Duk Padiet in northern Jonglei late Monday, with most of those killed “women, children and the elderly,” Manyang told AFP.
“We are expecting more to be injured because they ran to the villages last night,” he said, blaming gunmen from the Murle ethnic group for the attack.
Remote and impoverished Jonglei has seen a dramatic escalation of bloody tit-for-tat attacks between rival ethnic groups over cattle raids and abduction of people.
Newly-independent South Sudan has declared Jonglei a national “disaster area” while the United Nations has launched a “massive emergency” operation to help over 60,000 people affected by the violence.
Last month an 8,000-strong tribal militia of Lou Nuer youths marched on Pibor, to exact revenge on the Murle people there for alleged attacks, abductions and cattle raiding.
Now officials claim the latest violence is the Murle’s response.
One attacker was killed, a suspected Murle man wearing military fatigues, Manyang said.
The village “was attacked by people positively identified as the Murle armed youth,” said Philip Thon Leek Deng, the local MP.
Deng said that large herds of cattle had been stolen in a series of raids in the area last week, but the attack Monday targeted people.
“They did not take cattle… they are only coming for annihilation,” he said.
The people of Duk Padiet are from the Dinka ethnic group, who are also traditional rivals of the Murle.
Minister of Information Barnaba Marial Benjamin said around 3,000 extra security forces had been deployed in Jonglei, mostly to Murle areas, but now attacks were happening in Nuer and Dinka areas.
“The forces we have taken in cannot cover every area,” he said.
Jonglei, an isolated and swampy state about the size of Austria and Switzerland combined has limited mud roads often impassable for months during heavy rains.
Guns are common in the region devastated by two decades of war with northern Sudanese forces, a conflict that paved the way for the South’s independence last July.
The UN says that last year, violence between the two tribes left around 1,100 people dead and tens of thousands displaced in a series of cattle raids involving abductions of women and children.
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