Over 160 people were killed when heavily armed South Sudan tribal fighters launched a dawn raid on a rival group, officials said today, the latest in a series of ethnic clashes.
Most of the victims were women and children when men from the Murle ethnic group attacked a camp in the Akobo area of the region's swampy Jonglei state, where oil exploration is under way, yesterday morning.
"One hundred women and children, 50 men and 11 SPLA (soldiers from the southern Sudan People's Liberation Army) are being buried by the riverside this morning," Akobo commissioner Goi Jooyul Yol said in a statement today.
Mr Yol said a small force of southern soldiers that had been stationed in the area to protect the settlement was overrun by the attacking Murle.
Officials said most of the victims were from the Lou Nuer group, locked in a tribal war with the Murle that has already claimed over 700 lives this year in attacks and counter-attacks. Analysts say the extensive targeting of women and children, and the number of dead, mark a worrying new development in this year's violence.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon said in a statement issued by his press office that the attack was a "heinous act" and urged the government of southern Sudan "to bring to justice those responsible for these events and take the necessary measures to protect civilians across southern Sudan."
The south's President Salva Kiir has blamed the violence on political agitators who he said want to show that the south cannot run itself ahead of a promised 2011 southern referendum on separation from northern Sudan.
Disputes, many sparked by cattle rustling, have been exacerbated by a ready supply of arms left over from the two-decade civil war between north and south Sudan, and political disaffection over the slow pace of development in the region.
Reuters