Clashes erupt between gov’t forces and SPLA-IO in Ruweng

JUBA – Fighting broke out early on Wednesday between the South Sudan People’s Defence Forces (SSPDF) and the main armed opposition Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO) in Wunkur County of South Sudan’s Ruweng Administrative Area, local authorities said.

The clashes began at around 5 a.m. when the opposition SPLA-IO forces attacked an SSPDF military position in the county in what officials described as the second assault on the area within a week.

James Monyliak Majok, the information minister of the Ruweng Administrative Area, told Sudans Post that several soldiers were killed and others wounded, though the exact figures had not yet been confirmed.

“We are still identifying those who lost their lives on both sides, and the wounded have not yet been fully documented,” Monyliak said. “More details will be provided to the media once the county authorities complete their assessment.”

He added that opposition forces had also attacked an SSPDF barracks in Wunkur County last week, raising fears of a renewed cycle of violence in the area.

The fighting in Wunkur comes against a backdrop of rising insecurity across the wider Unity–Ruweng belt.

Ruweng was previously part of Unity State as Pariang and Abiemnom counties until October 2015, when President Salva Kiir restructured the country into new administrative units, a move critics said entrenched ethnic divisions.

The majority of SPLM-IO forces operating in Unity State are drawn from the Leek and Jikany Nuer communities of Rubkona and Guit, respectively, whose unresolved land disputes intensified following the 2015 partition and continue to drive localized conflict.

Just a day earlier, fresh fighting erupted in Koch County in southern Unity after an SPLM-IO military commissioner was ambushed near Koch town, according to rival accounts from the opposition and government forces.

South Sudan’s 2018 peace agreement formally ended a five-year civil war, but sporadic clashes persist in several regions as rival armed groups remain only partially integrated into a unified national army.

These clashes have escalated since the detention of First Vice President Riek Machar, the leader of the opposition, by President Salva Kiir Mayardit in Juba in March this year following fighting that killed over 250 government soldiers in Upper Nile state.