Africa

Surprise attack claims 13 lives in South Sudan

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At least thirteen people, including three local journalists, have been killed in an attack on their convoy in a remote northwestern region of South Sudan.

South Sudanese army spokesman, Philip Aguer, said on Monday that vehicles carrying local officials, journalists and civilians were ambushed in Raga County of the Western Bahr el-Ghazal state on Sunday.

Aguer said reporters from South Sudan’s state-run service broadcaster, the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC), were among the fatalities.

The spokesman blamed members of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) militant group for the attack.

On January 21, President Salva Kiir and rebel leader, Riek Machar, the leaders of South Sudan’s warring parties, signed a pact in the northern Tanzanian city of Arusha to end hostilities in the country.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy, Machar, around the capital, Juba.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes left tens of thousands of South Sudanese dead, and forced almost two million people from their homes.

South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after its people overwhelmingly voted in a referendum for a split from Sudan.

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