Army commander of ‘high rank’ killed during Upper Nile violence – state authorities

MALAKAL – A senior South Sudan army commander has been killed in the country’s increasingly restive Upper Nile state after armed civilians from the oil-rich state’s Nasir county attacked villages in Akoka as a revenge following an attack last month that community chiefs in Nasir and Maiwut counties said had resulted in the killing of several civilians.

During the earliest hours of Wednesday, an estimated number of 500 armed youth from Nasir, Longechuk and Maiwut attacked several villages in Upper Nile state’s Akoka displacing civilians and destroying shelters, according to several local government officials who said state authorities had not yet sent forces to protect civilians there.

Speaking to Sudans Post on Sunday evening, a senior state government official in Malakal said fighting had subsidized, but a senior army commander was killed along with ten civilians saying the actual number of casualties still remains unknown as some people were still missing, based on reports by local authorities in Akoka.

“The fighting has stopped, and we have been told by the local colleagues that around eleven (11) people have been killed, in addition to a commander from the SSPDF [South Sudan People’s Defense Forces] of high rank,” the senior state government official talking to Sudans Post in Malakal said on condition of anonymity.

“This is beside some people who are still missing in the aftermath of the fighting and search of those missing is under way and because of the huge number of people missing, we expects the number of fatalities to be higher than the number reported by county officials,” the official further added.

Separately, the army’s acting spokesman Brigadier Santo Domic Deng said during a press conference at the army’s headquarters in Bilpam on Saturday that the army’s division in Upper Nile state has sent a team of investigators to find out the causes of the violence as to whether it was a revenge attack and if it has some connections with the rival militaries.

“We don’t know the exact motive of the attack is not known whether it is a revenge attack against those who raided their cattle, or whether it has a political or military motive –this what we want to know,” he told journalists at the army headquarter in Juba on Saturday, adding that “Some people lost their crops, some crops got burn, some lost their sheep and cattle, and others lost their loved ones, so there’s fear and tension in the area.”