South Sudan: Scores Die in Upper Nile Cattle Battle

By NewsfromAfrica

JUBA---At least 100 people have died in South Sudan’s Jonglei state in the recent spate of clashes and cattle raids involving the region’s two rival communities, government officials have said.

Young men from the Murle ethnic group are said to have raided several cattle camps belonging to the rival Lou Nuer group, targeting eight areas north of the Akobo town, and made away with thousands herds of  cattle.

Jonglei state governor Kuol Manyang told the BBC that 100 people are feared dead in the raids which are believed to be carried on large scale.

The two communities have had a long history of proxy cattle raids and inter-ethnic clashes mainly due to poverty and competition over the region’s scarce resources that has led to loss of hundreds of lives.

The latest attack follows the January raid in the state by a force of over 6000 young men from the majority Lou Nuer group against the Murle that left hundreds dead, displacing thousands others.

The attack was in response to a deadly raid in August last year by fighters from the Murle community on Lou Nuer homes, killing at least 600 people and wounding 1000 others, where many homes were destroyed and nearly 40,000 cattle stolen.

South Sudan’s armed forces and the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) say they would send more troops to Jonglei State in response to those attacks, ahead of a scheduled disarmament exercise expected to collect an estimated 30,000 weapons from civilians in the state.

Jonglei state has been termed to be one of the unsafest places in the newly independent South Sudan owing to proliferation of arms among civilians and poor roads that are hampering security operations in the area.

The UN has on several occasions called for an end to the “cycle of violence” in the newly independent South Sudan, where it says 3000 people were killed and over 350,000 displaced last year alone in inter-communal clashes in South Sudan.