South Sudanese authorities have claimed that a group of armed people who recently occupied the town of Gumuruk in the Greater Pibor Administrative Area have withdrawn from the area, amid an upsurge in inter-communal clashes in this area of the African country.
South Sudanese Army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said that government forces re-entered the town on Wednesday afternoon after the withdrawal of the assailants, who had reportedly arrived from the adjacent Jonglei state.
«The army returned to Gumuruk yesterday after the withdrawal of the armed youths from Jonglei, who left on their own,» he said in statements to Radio Tamazuj. He stressed that the military is ready to respond to such attacks.
For his part, the Minister of Local Government of the Greater Pibor Administrative Area, Simon Peter Ajeny, confirmed that the Army «recaptured» the locality of Gumuruk, while indicating that «the situation is difficult». «The entire locality, with 50,000 houses, three schools and a health center, has been reduced to ashes,» he said.
James Morgan Pitia, South Sudan’s representative to the African Union (AU), asked the organization to help the central government in its efforts to achieve the disarmament and demobilization of this type of militias and recalled that the bloc did the same «when the wars in Liberia and Sierra Leone ended,» according to Eye Radio.
The Jonglei authorities demanded on Wednesday that the central government intervene and put an end to the fighting, while calling for the withdrawal of the assailants. In this regard, the Jonglei Information Minister, John Samuel Manyoun, called these people «criminals».
The United Nations last week expressed its «deep concern» over calls for the mobilization of members of the Nuer community in Greater Jonglei and warned that it could lead to «massive attacks» against the population in this area of South Sudan.
South Sudan has a unity government that was launched following the materialization of the 2018 peace agreement between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Riek Machar, which resulted in the latter returning to the post of first vice-president of the African country.
Despite the decrease in violence due to the political conflict, the country has recorded an increase in inter-communal clashes, mainly motivated by cattle rustling and disputes between pastoralists and farmers in the most fertile areas of the country, especially due to the increase in desertification and displacement of populations.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
