Women and children are being deliberately targeted in ethnic clashes in south Sudan, in a new pattern of fighting that leaves more dead than wounded, a medical aid group said on Thursday.
Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) said clashes it responded to in the Jonglei and Upper Nile States in the past six months killed 1 057 people, while wounding 259.
“This is new — the intention is to attack a village and to kill. The result is a population living in total fear, with significant humanitarian and medical needs,” Jonathan Whittall, head of MSF in south Sudan, said in the statement.
“The violent clashes are different to the traditional ‘cattle rustling’ that normally occurs each year. Women and children, usually spared in this fighting, are now deliberately targeted and the number of deaths are higher than the number of wounded,” he said.
More than 2 000 people have died and 250 000 been displaced in inter-tribal violence across southern Sudan since January, according to the United Nations, which says the rate of violent deaths now surpasses that in Sudan’s war-torn western region of Darfur.
MSF warned that the fighting is endangering an already dire humanitarian situation in the south, where relief groups struggle to provide aid to those displaced in the fighting.
Clashes between rival ethnic groups in south Sudan break out frequently — some sparked by cattle rustling and disputes over natural resources, others in retaliation for previous attacks.
At least 42 people, including seven soldiers, were killed and dozens wounded in clashes between troops and cattle rustlers in south Sudan last week that also displaced 24 000 people, local officials said.
The UN said “thousands” of people were displaced.
Jonglei state was one of the areas hardest hit in Sudan’s two-decade-long north-south civil war, which ended in 2005 with a power-sharing deal between the Muslim north and the Christian and animist south.
Authorities struggle to maintain order in the sprawling state, which is the size of Austria and Switzerland combined.
The state remains awash with small arms and there are frequent clashes between rival groups.
Heavy-handed but ineffective disarmament campaigns have left regions at risk of attack from their still armed neighbours.
Under the deal that ended Africa’s longest civil war, the south has a six-year transitional period of regional autonomy and takes part in a unity government until the 2011 referendum on self-determination.
Southern officials have accused the ruling National Congress Party in the north of providing weapons to some ethnic groups. The NCP denies the accusation. — AFP