The death toll from a raid carried out by attackers from South Sudan in western Ethiopia has risen to 208 people, an Ethiopian official said, adding that 108 children were kidnapped.
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He said the attackers were not thought to have any links to the South Sudanese government or rebels. The Murle and Nuer tribes have a long history of antagonism and have raided each other’s territory for generations over cattle, grazing lands and water rights. “They are closing in on the attackers”, Getachew said, according to Al Jazeera.
“What we know is that they are heavily armed and well organized, and they knew what they were doing”, government spokesman Getachew Reda told The Washington Post.
After winning independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan descended into war two years later, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings that have split the poverty-stricken country along ethnic lines.
David Shinn, a professor of International Relations at George Washington University and former U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia, said the current situation traces its roots to the ethnic conflict originating on both sides of the Ethiopia-South Sudan border.
He told the AP that several children were abducted and taken back to South Sudan; the BBC reported the number of children was at least 39. “The conflict in South Sudan has resulted in refugees moving into Ethiopia”.
South Sudan rebel leader Riek Machar was due in Gambella on Sunday before returning to South Sudan’s capital Juba on Monday.
About ten villages reportedly inhabited by members of the Gaajaak-Nuer community were attacked by the armed groups.
The rival Murle tribesmen are closely allied with South Sudan President Salva Kiir’s ethnic Dinka people.
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“The area of Boma State is suffering from a government vacuum”, said Yau Yau, who was replaced in December by presidential decree appointing a new Boma State governor and dissolving the Greater Pibor Area Administration, which had been created by a 2013 peace deal.
