Tribal killings stir dark memories in south Sudan

story by Jonglei State News
written by Skye Wheeler

WERNYOL, Sudan – Daruka Lueth knew it was no ordinary cattle-rustling raid the moment more than 800 armed tribesmen circled her south Sudanese village of Wernyol at dawn and opened fire on its thatch huts.

Sudan's oil-producing south has been plagued by ethnic clashes for as long as anyone can remember, mostly fought over livestock with relatively few casualties.

This year larger and more dangerous forces have been at work, forces that have already killed more than 1,200 people in a wave of violence that has targeted villagers as often as cattle herders and women and children as often as men.

The blood-letting has raised fears for the cohesion of the region's fragile tribal patchwork, just as it is preparing for a referendum on whether to split away from Sudan to become Africa's newest independent state.

The bullets ripped through the huts' walls in Wernyol as the attackers from the Lou Nuer tribe closed in on August 28. They shot through doors and cut down villagers as they fled, killing 38 and injuring 64 by the end of the half-hour raid.

There is a jagged line of graves on the outskirts of the rain-soaked settlement, where Wernyol's residents from the Bor Dinka tribe were buried where they fell.

The ground inside Lueth's hut is still marked with patches of blood, and outside another small mound of earth shows the last resting place of her 17-year-old son, Chol Mabior.

"We were in here hiding. They came and shot my son," she said, talking to Reuters inside her home.

"The violence began like this in 1991," she added, referring to the last time she had to flee Wernyol, during a particularly bloody episode in Sudan's 1983-2005 civil war.