Gunmen kill nine people in south Sudan’s Juba attack

June 12, 2006 (JUBA, South Sudan) — Gunmen killed nine people in an attack on the outskirts of the south Sudanese capital Juba on Sunday night, an army officer said on Monday.

Residents said the gunmen were from the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), a Ugandan rebel group, and that the foreigners were working for a Russian road construction company.

Achol Achol, the officer with the government’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA), told Reuters that the attack at about 10 p.m. (1900 GMT) was in the Gumba area on the east bank of the Nile and a few miles from the city centre.

Nine people were wounded, including two children and five women, Achol added.

The SPLA, a former rebel group which is now under the command of the southern Sudan regional government, sent out search parties to track the attackers, he said.

In the morning hundreds of villagers took shelter in the compound around the Juba Radio transmitter, which has a small police contingent, witnesses said.

The government of southern Sudan has been organising talks with the Lord’s Resistance Army in the hope of persuading the group to leave the country.

The LRA is notorious for killing civilians, abducting children and mutilating victims in a campaign without clearly stated political aims.

It has taken refuge in southern Sudan, which had its own civil war for 21 years before a peace deal in January 2005.

(Reuters)