18 killed in South Sudan attack over land rights

Armed attackers from a neighbouring state killed or burned to death 18 people, including eight soldiers, in South Sudan's Western Bahr el Gazal state, the state's interim governor said Tuesday.

Arkenjelo Anyar Anyar said armed youths from the neighbouring Warrap state torched a local market, houses and a police station in Tharkueng Payam following a dispute over land rights.

He said the 10 dead civilians included "children, women, elderly, they were burned because they couldn't escape", adding that around 2,000 people were displaced or homeless.

Thirty-nine people were killed and dozens of others were wounded last Wednesday when violence broke out between rival groups of cattle herders in South Sudan's Warrap and Lake states.

The clashes resulted in 19 deaths among herders from northwest Warrap, the state's information minister William Wol Mayom Bol said, adding that 17 people were injured in the violence.

"When we learned of the attack, the government of Warrap state dispatched two committees" to the area to lower tensions and protect civilians, he added.

The casualty toll in neighbouring Lake State was "20 people killed, 36 wounded and one person is still missing," said police spokesman Major Elijah Mabor Makuac.

Makuac said the clashes had become a yearly occurrence, with rival cattle herding communities from the two states clashing for resources every dry season.

Bol said, "The violence has been de-escalated but minor clashes are still being reported in inaccessible swampy areas".

He called for "peaceful co-existence and co-operation between the two sisterly states."

Earlier this month, fighting between rival communities in a disputed region claimed by both Sudan and South Sudan killed 54 people, including two United Nations peacekeepers.

Story by AFP