By Nangayi Guyson –nangayi.guyson@alleastafrica.com
Kampala, Uganda – At least 14 people have been reported dead after clashes erupted out between government forces and the main rebel group in the South Sudanese town of Raga. Rebel spokesman said on Saturday.
The rebels fighting the government in South Sudan had briefly occupied the northwestern town, near the border with Sudan and Central African Republic, before withdrawing to nearby bases to prepare for a counter-attack.
Opposition spokesman Lam Paul Gabriel Lam told Reuters that.”For the last two days the government bombed our areas around Raga and yesterday our forces decided to go and raid Raga,”
“Around 14 people were counted killed but many are injured … we had one soldier killed with some injuries,” he told Reuters.
Oil-rich South Sudan has been riven by violence since 2013, when President Salva Kiir, a Dinka, fired his Nuer deputy Riek Machar. The political showdown quickly split along ethnic lines and has drawn many tribes into a complex patchwork of conflict.
On Monday, there were also reports of about 16 people killed in Wau, 200 miles (300 km) from Raga, when government soldiers sealed off roads and allied militias went door-to-door hunting members of ethnic minorities.
According to UN, the continued fighting in many parts of South Sudan has forced 60 aid workers to flee affecting the efforts to help civilians in the famine-hit nation.
The UN humanitarian agency OCHA warned that helping the needy was growing ever more dangerous after three people involved in delivering food aid were brutally killed in Wau this week.
“There are no words left to explain the level of frustration and outrage I feel regarding the continued attacks against humanitarians in South Sudan who are simply trying to help the civilians who are suffering as a result of this conflict,” said OCHA coordinator Eugene Owusu in a statement released this week.
The UN peacekeeping mission UNMISS, which has been blocked from accessing some conflict zones, said 13,500 people had fled to their base near Wau this week. More than 3,000 others were seeking refuge at a Catholic church compound.
The violence that broke out in 2013 has displacement millions of South Sudanese people into the neighboring countries where they are seeking refuge.
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