KENYA/FILE: Aid agencies warn of renewed conflict in Sudan

Record ID: 361951

  • Title: KENYA/FILE: Aid agencies warn of renewed conflict in Sudan
  • Date: 8th January 2010
  • Summary: NAIROBI, KENYA (JANUARY 7, 2010) (REUTERS) WIDE OF NEWS CONFERENCE JOURNALISTS WAITING FOR NEWS CONFERENCE TO START (SOUNDBITE) (English) OXFAM SPOKESMAN FOR AFRICA, ALUM MCDONALD, SAYING "There have been growing political tensions between the north and the south and also within the south itself and the peace agreement which was signed five-years-ago this week is looki
  • Embargoed: 23rd January 2010 12:00
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  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA148QI95M006SH9CL3UUMBOL22
  • Story Text: Armed Nuer tribesmen killed at least 139 members of a rival tribe in an attack in a remote area of southern Sudan, prompting aid agencies to warn of the real possibility of renewed warfare in the troubled African country.
    The Nuer tribesmen attacked Dinka cattle herders in Tonj, one of the most remote parts of oil-producing south Sudan, on Saturday and seized about 5,000 animals.
    A surge of tribal violence in 2009 killed about 2,500 people and forced 350,000 to flee their homes in the south, said a report issued by ten aid groups including Oxfam.
    "There have been growing political tensions between the north and the south and also within the south itself and the peace agreement which was signed five-years-ago this week is looking extremely fragile," Oxfam spokesman for Africa, Alun McDonald, told a Nairobi news conference on Thursday (January 7, 2010).
    There was now a risk the violence could escalate, undermining a fragile 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of north-south civil war.
    "Now people are going out with weapons and they are shooting one another and they are burning down homesteads and there is actually this strange phenomena of actually burning down, destroying crops and also destroying other livestock as well," Richard Poll, head of the International Rescue Committee, Southern Sudan, warned the news conference.
    A lethal cocktail of rising violence, chronic poverty and political tensions has left the peace deal on the brink of collapse.
    The underdeveloped region has been plagued by violent tribal clashes, often sparked by cattle-rustling raids.
    Southern leaders last year accused Khartoum of backing militias to undermine the south, although some politicians acknowledged southern officials may also have been arming fellow tribesmen to build up support ahead of elections due in April.
    The United Nations said it was sending a team to the Tonj area to check on the reports, saying other sources had confirmed there were a large number of deaths.
    The U.N.'s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the south said fighting had also been reported in three other areas.
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