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21 April 2009
More than 170 people have been killed in clashes
between different ethnic groups in south Sudan,
according to government officials.
Officials from the UN and the South Sudanese
government, sent to investigate the clashes, were
prevented from getting to the scene on Tuesday due to
bad weather, the Sudanese Sahafa newspaper
reported.
The fighting erupted in villages over the weekend
between members of the Lou Nuer tribe and others from
the rival Murle ethnic group in south Sudan's Jonglei
state.
Doyak Chol, the commissioner of Akobo county, said
on Monday, that 177 bodies had been found and that he
expected the number to grow.
"We are expecting more than 300 [bodies] by the
time all the places have been checked," he said.
He did not say how many of the dead were Lou Nuer
and how many from the Murle attackers.
In one of the 16 villages razed in the attack, many
children drowned in a river as they tried to flee
gunmen, he said.
UN investigation
David Gressly, the co-ordinator for the United Nations
Mission in Sudan, said that the UN team dispatched to
the hard-to-reach area would assess security and
humanitarian needs following the violence.
A smaller,
initial assessment team was sent on Sunday but was not
able to verify the death toll, he added.
The remote and marshy
Jonglei state - where French oil giant Total holds a
massive, mainly unexplored concession - has been hit
especially hard by cattle raiding and related killings
that have split communities along ethnic lines.
Analysts and officials in the southern government have
said that as well as disrupting peace, these clashes
could derail planned national elections in 2010 and a
referendum on independence for the south in 2011.
In March, at least 453 people, mainly women and
children, were killed in Lou Nuer attacks on Murle
villages.
Those attacks, in which a large number of cows were
stolen, were widely thought to have been in
retaliation for the theft of 20,000 Lou cattle in
January. |
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