“THERE was fighting which took place almost in my village in which six innocent people were killed,” says Pastor Kenyi. “We had to come on foot and we slept on the way for six days.” Mr Kenyi, a bishop in South Sudan’s Kajo Keji county, fled with his wife and six children before crossing the border and finding safety in Goborro, a UN-run reception centre in Uganda. A well-built man with a camouflage cowboy hat, rosary beads and crucifix around his neck, Mr Kenyi is among more than 785,000 people who have fled violence in South Sudan for refuge in Uganda.
In the first week of March as many as 3,000 people were crossing the border each day to escape fighting between forces of the South Sudanese president, Salva Kiir (who are mostly Dinka), and rebels loyal to former vice-president Riek Machar (who are mainly Nuer). South Sudan gained independence in July 2011, but civil war erupted in 2013. Although a fragile peace agreement was signed in 2015, violence started up again in July last year. Since then it has taken on more of an ethnic character, with murder, rape and torture of civilians rife, in part an attempt at ethnically cleansing parts of...Continue reading
Source: Middle East and Africa http://ift.tt/2maXrPx
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