JUBA, South Sudan — Rebels in South Sudan killed at least 41 people and wounded scores in a gun attack in a remote part of the country’s restive Jonglei state, a regional official said Sunday.

The attack on Sunday morning is believed to have been carried out by rebels loyal to militia leader David Yau Yau helped by youth from his Murle tribe, according to Hussein Maar, the acting governor of Jonglei.

“Preliminary reports we got indicate that 41 people got killed and 63 got wounded, some of them critically,” he said.

He said the U.N. Mission in South Sudan airlifted some of the wounded to the state capital, Bor, and to the country’s main hospital in the capital, Juba.

The attackers were armed with automatic weapons and shot indiscriminately. They also stole thousands of cattle, according to Maar.

South Sudan peacefully broke away from Sudan in 2011 after a brutal civil war and years of effort by U.S. leaders, but since then the country has seen multiple bouts of ethnic violence in Jonglei. The country is awash in weapons – many held by civilians and security forces accused of poor discipline.

Watchdog groups have recently noted some rights violations allegedly committed by South Sudan’s armed forces as they attempt to quell Yau Yau’s rebellion. Many Murle have been killed and others have fled to the bush in recent violence.


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