Fighting in South Sudan camp leaves 13 displaced people dead: UN

In recent months, South Sudan’s Upper Nile State has become a center of violence organized primarily by armed militias.

Thirteen people have been killed in inter-group fighting in a camp for displaced persons in northern South Sudan, the UN mission that runs the camp said.

Clashes between two ethnic communities in a camp in Malakal, capital of Upper Nile state, first broke out after a man was stabbed to death on Thursday.

UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) spokesperson Ben Malor said, “Initial reports to the mission indicate that at least three people have been killed and more than 20 injured, some of them receiving treatment at mission hospitals. There are,” he said. Friday statement.

“Ten more deaths were confirmed at other facilities later that day.”

At least 50,000 people live in the camp. Since the civil war began in 2013 and the first groups have been there, the numbers have fluctuated.

About 3,000 people fleeing fighting in neighboring Sudan also came to the camp, according to Upper Nile Information Minister Luke Sadara, who said the number had increased in recent weeks.

Malor said calm was returning on Friday as UNMISS and the South Sudanese military stepped up security in and around the camp.

A peace deal signed in 2018 to end the civil war has significantly reduced fighting in South Sudan, but violence remains widespread in areas where rights to rangeland, water, farmland and other resources are contested. ing.

In recent months, Upper Nile State has become a center of violence organized mainly by armed militias.

In 2016, fighting in the Malakal camp killed at least 18 people, including two staff members of the aid group Doctors Without Borders.

According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 166 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the region in December and more than 20,000 people were displaced.