Eight killed in boat attack in Central Equatoria state
March 31, 2015 (BOR) – At least eight people have died and others are missing after gunmen attacked a boat in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria state on Saturday.
The boat was hired by a group of regular traders operating between Jonglei state capital Bor and Terekeka county.
Among those killed were five men from the Dinka Bor, one from Anuak in Jonglei state, and two Mundari, according to Terekeka commissioner Jacob Gore Samuel.
Gore confirmed the incident by phone on Tuesday. He said the attack took place at about 1pm (local time).
“The security personnel came to me [and told me] that there was an incident along the river between Gemeza and Terkeka,” Gore said, adding the traders were from Jonglei.
He said security personnel had been dispatched to search for the boat, but were unable to locate it.
The security personnel investigating the incident were told by people from one cattle camp that the boat may have been attacked by members of a rival cattle camp.
“Good samaritans from one of the cattle camps said they heard the sound of the boat coming along the water current, but before it could reach them they heard the gunshots and the boat engine stopped,” said Gore.
“This indicated that those people attacked the boat”, he added.
Gore said that members of the suspected cattle camp had since shifted away from the river deeper inside the swamp and could not immediately be traced.
“When the security [personnel] went there, they discovered that the cattle camp that had carried out the attack had moved out to another direction,” he said.
He said police and soldiers from the South Sudanese army (SPLA) would begin tracking the camp on Wednesday to locate the suspects.
Gore has condemned the killings in the strongest terms, describing it as a cold blooded attack on innocent people.
Bor commissioner Mamer Ruk said the bodies of four Dinka Bor men have been retrieved from the river so far, but the rest are still missing. He said recovery operations were continuing. None of the luggage onboard has been located.
Ruk said the incident will likely lead to the closure of both road and water transport link, adding that the Mundari posed an ongoing security risk.
Bor depends heavily on the Juba-Bor road and the Nile river for the daily transportation of people and goods.
“If this continues, there will be no means of transport for us,” said Ruk, who has called on authorities in Central Equatoria to cooperate with Jonglei to find an amicable solution security issues.
However, Gore has described the attack as an isolated incident between the eastern Mundari and people of Jonglei, saying it was unlikely to cause any major disruption to transport on the Juba-Bor road and river routes linking Jonglei.
Mundari tribal groups exist on both the eastern and western banks of the river Nile.
“Road transport will remain unaffected because the people who have been killed – one was from Gemeza (eastern bank) – and the cattle camp that attacked the boat was from Terekeka (western side), so the problem is not between the people of Gemeza and Bor, that road is serving all of them,” he said.
However, Gore said he was concerned that the incident could escalate, sparking ethnic conflict between the Dinka Bor and Mundari, as well as among the Mundari themselves.
“The Mundari people of Gemeza are unhappy, their son has been killed; the same as the Mundari of Tali and our brothers in Bor,” he said. “This thing has confused the security situation of this county. It may bring chaos,” he added.
Everyone is on high alert; the whereabouts of the culprits is the concern of the people in Terekeka.
A number of chiefs from the Mundari village whose cattle camp is suspected of attacking the boat will accompany the army and police on Wednesday and have been threatened with arrest if they refuse to point out the perpetrators once the cattle camp in question is located.
“We are taking this issue seriously so that we know who killed the people. We will arrest [the] camp leaders until they tell us the people who killed those in the boat,” he said.
Gore called on the families of the deceased to remain calm while investigations were being carried out.
“I call on the families of the people killed to be patient [and] to give us the room to work together with my colleague from Bor so that we get the people who have done this,” he said.
This is not the first incident involving the Mundari and Dinka Bor people, with six men killed on 8 February 2014 after their vehicle was ambushed on the Bor-Juba road between Sudan Safari and Gemeza. Two other people travelling in the vehicle at the time were also injured.
Eyewitnesses claimed the attackers were from the Mundari.
There have been a number of casualties in recent months following an increase in counter raids among the cattle keepers of the Dinka and Mundari in Central Equatoria state, where the two groups have been living together for the past three years, sharing the same water resources and pastures.
Clashes also erupted in October 2009 after cattle belonging to Dinka herders destroyed Mundari farms. The then Terekeka commissioner, Juma Ali, reported that 21 Dinka Bor men died and 20 villages were burnt to the ground, with thousands of Mundari displaced from the county.
(ST)