LONGECHUK – South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF) troops pushed back an offensive by Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA-IO) and allied armed youths at Mathiang town in Upper Nile State’s Longechuk County, on Monday.
Longechuk Commissioner Tutlis Kong told local language newspaper, BIA KƐƐL MEDIA, the fighting took place in the early hours, narrating that the SPLA-IO troops initially advanced to Mathiang town, before they were repulsed.
“We were attacked by the SPLA-IO troops but we defeated them and they fled in disarray.” Kong said.
Footage circulating online and later posted by SSPDF spokesperson Maj. Gen. Lul Ruai, shows a badly wounded man purported to be a White Army leader in Longechuk being filmed and interrogated in Nuer language by army soldiers.
Lul, a native of Lou Nuer, reiterated his previous appeal to the armed youths to desist from waging war on the government, alongside SPLA-IO.
The clashes are a continuation of heavy fighting that erupted in the same area on August 28, where local sources told Juba Witness that SPLA-IO and allied local youths known as the White Army launched a coordinated attack on SSPDF troops in a bid to seize Mathiang town.
This triggered heavy gunfire and artillery exchange that could be heard from miles through the morning hours. Details about the fighting and casualties are yet to be availed.
On his part, SPLA-IO spokesperson Col. Lam Paul Gabriel confirmed the incident, stating that their forces intercepted what he called an attacking force of SSPDF.
‘Turning point’
The UN Security Council said on 18 that escalating violence, political deadlock and a deepening humanitarian crisis puts South Sudan “at a turning point”, as several UN and regional officials urged an end to hostilities and a renewed commitment to the Revitalized Peace Agreement.
Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Assistant Secretary-General for Africa in the Departments of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs and Peace Operations informed UNSC that since March clashes between the SSPDF and SPLM/A-IO have resulted in deaths, displacement and destruction of civilian infrastructure.
Pobee warned that South Sudan “is at a turning point,” and the revitalized peace agreement “remains the only viable framework to break the cycle of violence” and achieve the country’s first democratic elections.
George Aggrey Owinow, Interim Chairperson of the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission, also said that the political and security situation in the country has substantially deteriorated.
In March, shortly after the commencement of the extended Transitional Period, an administrative military deployment coordinated by the SSPDF and SPLM/A-IO forces into the town of Nassir in Upper Nile State, resulted in armed clashes, displacing tens of thousands of civilians and killing many more.
This incident triggered a political and security crisis, which was followed by the arrest and detention in Juba of several senior SPLM/A-IO political leaders. In the days that followed, Riek Machar Teny, the First Vice-President, was put under house arrest, where he remains to date.
