A series of attacks in Abiyé, a disputed region between Sudan and South Sudan, killed 32 people, including women, children and a peacekeeper, local officials said.
The attacks, carried out in two counties on Sunday by armed militias and soldiers wearing South Sudanese army uniforms, were condemned by a government official from Abiyé, an oil-rich area on the border of the two countries.
“During these attacks, 32 people were killed, including children and women who were burned in their huts, and more than 20 people were injured,” Bulis Koch Aguar Ajith, Abiyeh’s information minister and South Sudanese spokesman for the region, said in a statement on Published Sunday evening.
“One UNISFA (United Nations Interim Security Force for Abiyé, editor’s note) soldier was killed and another was injured,” he added in this press release without further details.
South Sudan has called for an urgent investigation into these “barbaric attacks on civilians”.
The Abiyé region, located between Sudan and South Sudan, has been a point of tension since the south gained independence in 2011.
Earlier this month, a regional UN envoy expressed fears that fighting between rival factions vying for power in Sudan was approaching the border between South Sudan and Abiye.
The proximity of the fighting to Abiyé risks destabilizing this already fragile region, while the ongoing crisis in Sudan has “effectively suspended” talks between the two countries over this long-disputed territory, warned Hanna Tetteh, United Nations special envoy for the Horn of Africa.
In Sudan, the conflict that broke out on April 15 between the army chief, General Abdel Fattah al-Burhane, and his deputy and rival, General Mohamed Hamdane Daglo, left more than 10,000 dead, according to an estimate by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (Acled), is considered largely undervalued.
The UN Security Council voted unanimously this month to extend the peacekeeping mission in Abiyé, which was established 12 years ago and currently has 4,000 soldiers.