Fierce ethnic clashes over cattle rustling killed more than 200 people in South Sudan at the weekend, and hundreds more were abducted in the troubled fledgling nation, a state governor said Monday.
“The people killed are around 223, 150 are injured,” Jonglei state governor Kuol Manyang told AFP. “There are about 300 women and children who are thought to have been abducted.”
Manyang said around 100000 cows were stolen on Friday and Saturday when cattle raiders from the Murle community in Jonglei state attacked the ethnic Lou Nuer living in neighbouring Upper Nile state.
Manyang said the attacks in and around Romyieri, in Nasir territory, started at dawn on Friday.
There has been no independent confirmation of the figure in a region where death toll numbers often vary dramatically. The area affected is very remote with few roads and no mobile network.
An aid agency in Akobo, a county on the border in Jonglei, the International Medical Corps, said it had treated 63 people evacuated after a five-hour boat journey.
“The caseload includes 60 patients with gunshot wounds, as well as fractures and other minor wounds. One person died in transit to the hospital,” IMC said in a statement Monday.
It said a team that had travelled to collect the wounded had seen “the bodies of people killed in the fighting”. — AFP