At Least 25 Dead in S Sudan UN Camp Attack
Local Editor
At least 25 people were massacred and 120 wounded when gunmen in army uniforms attacked then torched a UN camp that was sheltering civilians in South Sudan last month, the UN said Friday.
The updated toll came two weeks after the two-day gun battle inside the camp in the northeastern town of Malakal, with a report by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs [OCHA] detailing the failure of peacekeepers to protect the civilians sheltering at the base.
Over 47,000 people lived in the camp, after fleeing for safety from a civil war that broke out in December 2013. The UN said the attack was a possible war crime.
Reports of troops in government army uniforms storming the camp and "firing on civilians" were "credible", OCHA said, contradicting initial UN story that the fighting was between tribal "youths."
"About 3,700 families' shelters were destroyed or damaged during the fighting and fires, along with multiple humanitarian facilities, including clinics, water tankers, nutrition centers and schools," OCHA reported.
Those killed include three aid workers, two of them South Sudanese health workers for medical charity Doctors Without Borders [MSF].
In addition, MSF noted that other people who tried to put out fires or help the wounded were deliberately targeted and shot.
Relatively, residents added that some were burned to death in the deliberate fires that razed sections of the camp, where civilians lived in segregated ethnic plots to dampen tribal tensions.
Since the attack in Malakal, clashes elsewhere in the eastern small town of Pibor on February 21 forced thousands to flee as gunmen looted five aid agency bases, including an MSF clinic.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team
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