From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Sep 21 2009 - 06:41:31 EDT
Armed tribesmen attack south Sudan villagers, soldiers
Mon Sep 21, 2009 5:58am GMT
By Skye Wheeler
JUBA, Sudan (Reuters) - Tribesmen attacked a village in south Sudan on
Sunday, overwhelming soldiers guarding the settlement and killing an unknown
number, the army said.
More than 1,200 people, many of them women and children, have been killed in
a wave of ethnic clashes in the oil- producing region this year.
Many of the attacks are linked to long-running feuds over cattle rustling,
exacerbated by a ready supply of guns and dissatisfaction over the slow rate
of development in the region.
Ssouthern politicians have also accused their former civil war foes in north
Sudan of arming rival tribes to spread instability before national elections
scheduled for April 2010 and a referendum on southern independence in 2011.
Khartoum denies the accusation.
A large group of fighters from the Lou Nuer ethnic group attacked Duk Padiet
village, inhabited by the Dinka Hol tribe, on Sunday morning, southern army
spokesman Kuol Diem Kuol said.
It was too early to give a death toll, he said.
"They overran our company plus the youth of the village," he said.
Sudanese national security officers, who were visiting the village to gather
information on recent clashes, were also overwhelmed in the attack.
Kuol said it was thought to be the same group of Lou Nuer fighters who
attacked the Jonglei village of Wernyol last month killing 40 and wounding
64.
"These are the same elements attacking. Definitely these are Lou Nuer
militiamen," he said.
Sudan's mostly Christian and animist south and Muslim north fought each
other in a two-decade civil war that ended in a 2005 peace deal.
The conflict also set southern tribes against each other as the north armed
rival militias to undermine its enemy.
The 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement set up a national coalition
government shared oil wealth between north and south and promised the
elections and the referendum.
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
Bad harvest, El Nino spell hunger for east Africa: UN
Mon Sep 21, 2009 10:04am GMT
ROME (Reuters) - Poor harvests due to lack of rain, combined with worsening
conflict and the El Nino climatic effect, could leave millions more people
in east Africa facing food shortages this year, the United Nations said on
Monday.
A report by the U.N. Food and Agriculture organisation said that from Uganda
to Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia a drop in cereal production was likely to
increase the nearly 20 million people already dependent on food assistance
in one of the world's poorest regions.
The perilous situation could be worsened by the El Nino climatic effect,
which brings heavy rains towards the end of the year that produce floods and
mudslides, ruining crops, killing livestock and damaging infrastructure, the
FAO said.
El Nino, an abnormal warming of the waters of the equatorial Pacific,
unhinges weather patterns around the world.
The food security situation is dire in conflict-torn Somalia, which faces
its worst humanitarian crisis in 18 years, with approximately half the
population -- an estimated 3.6 million people -- in need of emergency aid,
the FAO said.
That includes 1.4 million rural people affected by severe drought, and 1.3
million internally displaced people as a result of escalating violence, the
FAO said.
In Ethiopia, a partial failure of the secondary crop season, known as the
belg, is expected to hike the number of people in need of emergency
assistance to 6.2 million from 1.3 million at present.
In Kenya, the vital maize crop which accounts for 80 percent of annual
cereal production, is forecast 28 percent below usual levels at 1.84 million
tonnes.
Meanwhile, a fourth successive poor harvest is expected in Uganda, with the
worst hit area being the northern Acholi region which has been racked by
years of violence between the army and the rebel Lord's Resistance Army
where crops are expected to be 50 percent below their usual levels.
With more than one million people already food insecure in Uganda, the
number could rise steadily this year, the FAO said.
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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