S. Sudan denies ethnic killings occurred in recent clashes
July 12, 2016 (JUBA) – South Sudan government has dismissed a United Nations report alleging the recent clashes, involving rival forces, took an ethnic dimension during the four days of armed confrontations.
“If there are civilians who may have lost lives in cross fire, it occurred not because of their ethnicity”, he added.
The official was reacting to reports from embassies and aid organizations, which had called for evacuation of their staff members from the capital, Juba, on Tuesday, as a precarious calm settled over the city following several days of the deadly clashes.
“Several hundred people have already been killed, including civilians seeking refuge. Some of the civilians killed were reportedly targeted based on their ethnicity,” the U.N. special adviser on preventing genocide, Adama Dieng, said in a statement Tuesday.
The UN official released the statement after the government confirmed that at least 272 were killed, including 33 civilians, in the fighting that broke out on Friday night with gunfire between opposing army forces that raised fears of a return to civil war.
President Salva Kiir and former rebel leader, First Vice President Riek Machar, declared separate cease-fires Monday night. Military trucks drove up and down Juba’s roads with megaphones on Tuesday as soldiers were ordered to return to barracks.
Bodies were seen sprawled on Juba’s dirt streets. In some areas, the corrugated metal, sticks and other materials that once were shops or homes had collapsed. Tattered cloth waved in the breeze.
While the UN said the cease-fire in Juba appeared to be holding, it was “hugely worrying” that the fighting appeared to have spread outside Juba, the UN human rights office in Geneva said Tuesday.
The US embassy, Doctors Without Borders and the International Medical Corps were among organizations pulling out their staffs from South Sudan. Private chartered planes flew foreigners out of Juba’s reopened airport Tuesday, as regional carriers including Kenya Airways had cancelled flights there.
The US embassy announced on Tuesday night that it was organizing flights out of the country “for all United States citizens wishing to leave.” Japan dispatched military aircraft to evacuate its citizens.
Uganda also said it would send troops to Juba to evacuate its citizens while South Sudanese nationals trying to escape from the capital were prevented from doing so in the wake of the tense situation.
According to the UN, about 36,000 people have been displaced since the fighting began last week and described the humanitarian situation as “grave.” Aid groups have warned about the lack of clean water for the tens of thousands of people sheltering in various sites around Juba, as water tankers were unable to make deliveries.
Meanwhile, inside a crowded UN camp, people could be seen trying to pursue their daily lives behind shiny coils of razor wire.
The fighting in Juba has severely threatened a peace deal signed last year between Kiir and Machar to end a civil war that had killed tens of thousands since late 2013. The agreement brought them and their supporters into a transitional coalition government last April.
In the latest fighting, government troops lined up tanks and fired at a UN base where tens of thousands of civilians are sheltering, witnesses said. At least eight civilians in the UN camp died in the crossfire.
During the clashes, government forces reportedly overran one of Marcher’s two bases in Juba, deploying helicopter gunships and tanks against opposition forces carrying only light arms. At least 35 of Machar’s bodyguards were killed in the latest clashes, according to the armed opposition military spokesman, William Gatjiath.
South Sudan’s civil war has exposed deep ethnic fault lines in the world’s youngest nation, pitting the Dinka supporters of Kiir against the Nuer followers of Machar. The latest fighting has awakened fears that South Sudan’s other ethnic groups could get involved.
(ST)