100 Die in Southern Sudan in New Outbreak of Old Tribal Conflict

DAKAR, Senegal — Ethnic fighting in southern Sudan over the weekend left more than 100 people dead in a remote, swampy region of the war-ravaged country, United Nations and local officials reported this week.

The fighting, in which women and children of the Lou Nuer tribe were killed, may have been in retaliation for an attack in March on a rival ethnic group, the Murle, in which more than 400 died, officials said. The fear now is that back-and-forth violence in Jonglei State could escalate unless there is decisive intervention. Only one company of United Nations peacekeepers is currently on the ground.

The killings are rooted in old rivalries and are tied to cattle rustling — thousands of Lou Nuer cattle were said to have been stolen in January — but the violence has been fueled by weapons left over from Sudan’s civil war, which lasted decades and was ended only by a fragile peace agreement reached in 2005. About two million people were killed and four million displaced in that conflict, involving the Muslim north and the mostly Christian and animist south.

The latest fighting in the south, with its basis in a separate, age-old pattern of antagonism and conflict, has been amplified by the war’s backwash.

“The problem with the war is, it brought in large quantities of weapons, so it is much more lethal,” said David Gressly, the United Nations regional coordinator for southern Sudan. 

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