Bloodbath in South Sudan as tribes go to war

South Sudan. Photo / Thinkstock

More than 3000 people have been reported killed in South Sudan during a week of clashes between two tribes.

Hundreds of children are missing and entire villages are said to have been burned after 6000 Lou Nuer tribe warriors reportedly attacked their rival Murle tribe.

The fighting is part of an escalating war between two ethnic groups who rely for survival on vast herds of cattle. They launch regular raids to snatch livestock, women and children.

"There have been mass killings, a massacre," Joshua Konyi, commissioner for Pibor County in Jonglei state, said. "We calculate that 2182 women and children were killed and 959 men died."

Last week the United Nations sent peacekeepers to warn residents in Pibor that Lou Nuer fighters were coming.

The Murle and the Lou Nuer send most of their young men to cattle camps to guard the community's livestock for months at a time. Large caches of weapons, left over from two decades of civil war, are stored in many of these camps. Raiding parties cross into their rivals' terrain in sometimes epic raids and counter-raids.

The Government has tried to disarm different factions, but has little authority over its outlying areas.

Jonglei state information minister, Isaac Ajiba, would not confirm or deny the claims made by commissioner Konyi, an ethnic Murle. "Yes, there have been casualties, but we don't have the details," he said.

- INDEPENDENT