when will gunfire seize in African countries
Heavy gunfire discharged in the South Sudanese town of Wau on Monday, as residents said militias joined to the government were going house to house searching for people from other ethnic groups. Streets were uninhabited and most locals remained inside.
There was no instant comment from the government and UN officials said they were monitoring the situation, without giving more details. “Armed militias are moving from house to house,” one person said,(identity withheld)
“It is an ethnic crackdown and it is been sponsored by cattle herders and armed civilian men from the Dinka tribe … I am now hiding.” Another resident said he had fled an attack in the northwest town that had left many people dead, including his cousin. Both described members of the president’s Dinka group searching for members of the local Lou and Fertit groups.
South Sudan descended into civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, fired his deputy, Riek Machar, a Nuer. Fighting since then has often break the oil-producing country along ethnic lines and created a patchwork of armed groups. The war in a territory already covered with weapons after decades of conflict has fuelled ethnic tensions over land, grazing grounds and long-running feuds.
Another resident said soldiers had blocked off a road leading to a civilian encampment protected by U.N. peacekeepers. More than 200,000 people have taken safety in such sites set up across the country after widespread ethnic killings and violence, many by soldiers. “We are aware of the situation in the town and we are looking into it,” U.N. spokesman Daniel Dickinson said.
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