JUBA: Unidentified youths shot dead 15 people in South Sudan’s Pibor region, including its commissioner, a senior official said on Wednesday, in the latest flare-up of violence in the country.
Civil war in South Sudan, erupting two years after the country won independence from Sudan and fought largely along ethnic lines between Dinkas and Nuers, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths between 2013 and 2018.
The shooting happened on Tuesday when the commissioner of Boma County in Pibor was returning from a visit to a village.
“The commissioner with his team went to Nyat village and on his return he was ambushed and 15 people were killed including the commissioner,” Abraham Kelang, information minister of Greater Pibor Administrative Area, told Reuters.
Kelang said the attackers were suspected to be youths from the region’s Anyuak community.
Among the dead were Boma’s deputy army commander, government officials and the county commisisoner’s bodyguards, Kelang said.
Since the 2018 peace deal, routine clashes among a patchwork of armed groups have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.
The Greater Pibor Administrative Area is among those affected.
Inhabited mostly by the Murle ethnic community, Boma County has experienced periodic violence sometimes between the Murle and Anyuak or with the Nuer or the Dinkas from neighboring Jonglei State.
The violence is also motivated by cattle rustling.
Youths kill 15 in South Sudan in latest clash
https://arab.news/v8a9u
Youths kill 15 in South Sudan in latest clash
- The shooting happened when the commissioner of Boma County in Pibor was returning from a visit to a village
Two Tunisia columnists handed over three years in prison
- Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies have already been in detention for almost two years
- They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering
TUNIS: Two prominent Tunisian columnists were sentenced on Thursday to three and a half years in prison each for money laundering and tax evasion, according to a relative and local media.
The two men, Mourad Zeghidi and Borhen Bsaies, have already been in detention for almost two years for statements considered critical of President Kais Saied’s government, made on radio, television programs and social media.
They were due to be released in January 2025 but have remained in custody on charges of money laundering and tax evasion.
“Three and a half years for Mourad and Borhen,” Zeghidi’s sister, Meriem Zeghidi Adda, wrote on Facebook on Thursday.
Since Saied’s power grab, which granted him sweeping powers on July 25, 2021, local and international NGOs have denounced a regression of rights and freedoms in Tunisia.
Dozens of opposition figures and civil society activists are being prosecuted under a presidential decree officially aimed at combatting “fake news” but subject to a very broad interpretation denounced by human rights defenders.
Others, including opposition leaders, have been sentenced to heavy prison terms in a mega-trial of “conspiracy against state security.”
In 2025, Tunisia fell 11 places in media watchdog Reporters Without Borders’ (RSF) World Press Freedom Index, dropping from 118th to 129th out of 180 countries.
