Three top officers who quit south Sudan’s army over alleged fraud in national elections are coordinating attacks in the oil-producing region, a renegade general said on Monday, but the army played down the threat.
South Sudan will hold a referendum on secession in January, and most analysts believe the underdeveloped region will opt for independence. Renegade attacks, tribal clashes and other insecurity have raised fears that conflict may spill over into neighbouring east Africa.
“Southerners are not happy with what happened during the elections,” said George Athor, a senior general who complained of fraud after losing in the April elections and went on the run on April 30.
“I have many people who joined me, one of them is Colonel Galwak Gai and the other is David Yauyau, and we have others in other areas,” he said.
Yauyau, who said he was coordinating operations with Athor, carried out an attack in Jonglei state a week ago, forcing the UN to evacuate 10 staff. The south Sudan army (SPLA) said Gai attacked it in oil-rich Unity state on Friday.
“Militia commander Galwak Gai came and attacked our position,” SPLA spokesman Kuol Diem Kuol said, adding that only one soldier was wounded, but they had found the bodies of two attackers and took four prisoners.
Gai’s telephone was out of service on Monday.
Kuol said Gai was on the run and his 360 soldiers were scattered, and loyal troops were searching for Athor.
“We are advising him to surrender ... if he resists then we will capture him by all means,” he said.
Kuol said that in separate incidents, eight people were killed and 27 wounded in Lakes state when the SPLA intervened to try to stem tribal clashes over tit-for-tat cattle raids.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
RSS