A massacre in April sent thousands of residents of this south Sudan district fleeing into the swampy wastes of the upper Nile. Last week, hunger drove them back into the clutches of the gunmen.
“What else could we do?” pregnant 20-year-old Nyakong Gatwech said. “The food the United Nations gave us is too little for all the family.”
She was shot in the arm and slashed with a spear when she returned to her village but survived. Others were not so lucky.
PHOTO: AFP
Officials estimate at least 185 people, mostly women, were killed in a second raid on August 2 by a militia force of dozens of fighters. The massacre was one of the deadliest single outbreaks of violence in the still largely lawless south of Sudan since a 2005 peace agreement ended two decades of civil war.
But it was not the first in Jonglei state, an ethnically divided region that was one of the worst hit by the long conflict with northern forces that left an estimated 1.5 million people dead and 4 million more homeless.
There have been repeated outbreaks of deadly fighting this year between the Lou Nuer and Murele ethnic groups, which have left more than 1,000 people dead and many thousands more homeless.
UN officials have warned that the recent rate of violent deaths now surpasses those in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur.
Traditional rivalries over cattle and pasture were further poisoned by opposing allegiances during the 1983 to 2005 civil war, with the Lou Nuer mainly siding with the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement that now heads the autonomous regional government in the south and the Murele mainly supporting pro-government militias.
Gatwech said former rebel fighters of the southern army had escorted her back to her village but that there were not enough troops to ward off the Murele militiamen.
“We thought the soldiers could protect us, but they killed them too,” she said, adding that 11 troops had died and several more had been wounded.
Namach Duk, 12, was attacked by the militiamen in a small fishing camp outside the small Jonglei town of Akobo.
“They shot me in the leg as I ran towards the river. Then they stabbed me in the back with a spear and left me for dead,” she said, turning to show a jagged hole in her arm.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack as “heinous,” and the World Food Programme has warned that an escalation in violence will hamper efforts to deliver aid.
“It was a clear massacre — women and children were lying in the river and shot at close range,” Akobo District Commissioner Goi Jooyul Yol said.
“Tribal conflict has taken on a new dimension,” he said.
Lou Nuer village elder Chot Rom agreed that the traditional conflict with the Murele had taken a turn for the worse.
“In the past we have fought over cattle, but this is something different,” he said.
“The Murele also abducted our children — we don’t know if we will ever get them back, and we expect more attacks in the future,” he added, lying on a thin bed in a simple hospital ward where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the groin.
The civil war years have left the region awash with weapons, something that the regional government has tried to tackle through a disarmament program.
But some charge that a heavy-handed yet uneven implementation of the program has left communities who have surrendered their weapons prey to others that have refused to reciprocate.
Others accuse civil war foe Khartoum of continuing to arm one community against the others as it did during the long years of conflict.
“People have guns from the war, but where are they getting the fresh ammunition they are using to kill civilians?” Yol said. “The north supported militias here during the civil war, and that support has not wound down.”
Akobo is isolated. Heavy rains force the closure of roads until December, and the main river route is blocked by enemies upstream.
The UN is flying food in, but it is a costly method and can only deliver limited supplies for the region’s more than 19,000 homeless.
The last attempted shipment by river of more than 700 tonnes of World Food Programme food was sunk or stolen in June during an attack in which some 95 soldiers accompanying the delivery were killed.
At a feeding station in Akobo run by aid agency Medair, mothers patiently line up to have their children assessed by medical staff.
“Many children are suffering from malnutrition,” said Eunice Kavoi, a Medair nurse heading a special feeding program for children. “We fear the situation in terms of nutrition will get worse if nothing is done to fly in more food for the community.”
Officials promise the river will open soon, with some small boats arriving in Akobo from Ethiopia carrying flour and beer, the first to do so in months.
“We are cut off like an island with enemies all around,” said trader Peter Tut, selling bundles of firewood in the quiet market, where basic food supplies have run out.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS