South Sudan bandits allegedly crossed into Ethiopia’s Gambella region and killed 28 people before fleeing with 43 children
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Tags: Murle bandits, president Salva Kiir, Riek Machar, Salva Kiir, South Sudan bandits
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More than 1,000 gunmen from South Sudan have killed 28 people and kidnapped 43 children in neighbouring Ethiopia, according to a government official.
Chol Chany, a regional government spokesman, said on Wednesday the raids occurred on Sunday and Monday in Gambella region’s Gog and Jor areas, which border South Sudan’s Boma region.
“Murle bandits carried out the attack. They fled along with 43 children,” Chany told Reuters news agency, using a term for a local ethnic group.
“The [Ethiopian military] is pursuing them. The assailants haven’t crossed over to South Sudan yet.”
According to AP news agency, Mawien Makol Arik, spokesman for South Sudan’s foreign ministry, was aware of fighting in Gambella.
He said Ethiopian troops have not crossed the border into South Sudan in pursuit of the accused attackers.
The latest raids took place almost a year after similar attacks in the province’s Jikawo and Lare areas, which border South Sudan’s Upper Nile State.
Then, more than 200 people died and about 160 children were kidnapped.
About 100 children have managed to return to Ethiopia, but the rest remain in the kidnappers’ hands, Chany said.
Civil war
Oil-rich South Sudan has been mired in a civil war since President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer, in December 2013. The resulting conflict has split the country along largely ethnic lines and forced more than three million people to flee their homes.
More than one million of them have found refuge in neighbouring countries, especially Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya and Sudan. Gambella alone is currently hosting up to 300,000 South Sudanese refugees.
Regional governments have expressed fears that violence in South Sudan could spill over its borders into their own nations.
