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On March 1, insurgents in South Sudan razed a village, killing 169 people, including women, children, and elders. South Sudanese officials are calling the attack a ‘brutal massacre' and warn that the death toll may rise as bodies continue to be uncovered. The death toll was counted as the bodies were buried in a mass grave on March 3. South Sudan is the world's youngest country, only separating from Sudan in 2011. Since its separation, the country has been marred by corruption and violence, defined by two warring ethnic groups, the Dinka and Nuer tribes.
169 killed
According to Sudanese officials, the killings took place early on March 1, in Abiemnom County, a county in Northern South Sudan near the border with Sudan. Elizabeth Achol, health minister in the northern Ruweng administrative area, confirmed that 169 people had been buried in mass graves on March 1, and that it was possible the death total could rise given the discovery of more bodies. According to South Sudanese officials, members of the Nuer group were the perpetrators of the attack, with the village that was razed being populated by Dinka people.
In a separate statement, Doctors Without Borders (Médecins sans frontières) reported that 26 staff members are missing in South Sudan, following an airstrike on one of the organization's facilities. The organization Doctors Without Borders provides some of the only healthcare available in South Sudan, and with airstrikes and militant attacks frequently threatening their hospitals, the organization is preparing to call the violence in South Sudan an all-out civil war… again.
A brief history of violence
Just a year after South Sudan gained independence through a referendum, a civil war broke out between the two largest ethnic groups in the country, the Dinka and Nuer. South Sudanese President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, while entangled in a power struggle, caused violent clashes in Juba, the Capital of South Sudan.
The power struggle created tensions across ethnic lines, with Kiir representing the Dinka people, and Machar representing the Nuer tribe. The tensions almost immediately expanded into civilian massacres, with both groups undertaking cattle raids and razing small villages across South Sudan. In 2013, the United Nations warned of a potential genocide in Sudan. The country has experienced on-and-off violence since the initial civil war, with peace deals being signed, broken, and re-signed over the last 15 years. Now, the two groups are represented by different leaders, but are focused on the same objective as the original.
What's next?
The conflict in South Sudan has been criminally underreported, with journalists being targeted, and other international crises taking priority over South Sudan's conflict. The South Sudanese people, who fought for years for independence from a violent Sudanese government, achieved their decades-long goal, only to be marred by corruption and violence in their own independent government. The United Nations and Doctors Without Borders have both warned that South Sudan has all of the ‘hallmarks of genocide' that the organizations track. With both Nuer and Dinka forces nearly exclusively targeting civilians, women, children, and elders have been found to be most at risk.
