The Commissioner of Cueibet County has reported eight people were killed in an inter-clans revenge attack in northern Cueibet County in Lakes State. Mayom Malek said at least 8 people from Tieptiep Payam were killed by Pagoor youths who launched a night attack on Sunday.
Among those people killed were four men, three women and a girl aged 9 years.
He also mentioned that among the victims was a woman from the same community as the suspected attackers, who had come to visit her relative at Tieptiep Payam.
“One of [the attackers’] brother’s wife from Pagoor who was married recently with the dowry of 150 cows from Tieptiep clan was also among the victims,” Mayom told Radio Tamazuj.
According to the commissioner, the attackers from Pagoor may have been seeking revenge for one of their community killed in July last year by the Tieptiep clan. They claimed that killers from the Tieptiep community who had been arrested for this crime were later released in Rumbek town.
Mayom said the attackers were not so many in number but only three youths who acted on their own initiative and without the sanction of the community leadership from Pagoor. He said they crossed a small river on the border of the two payams in order to launch the attack.
Mayom said he has sent forces to arrest the killers, saying, “I believe they will not escape – they will surrender themselves to the authority because we no knew the attackers.”
The commissioner urged local youths not to depend on rumors like what the killers had heard that the killers of their brother who were detained in Rumbek were released, which was what prompted their attack.
Mayom asked the Cueibet community to be patient and wait the law to take its course.
Meanwhile, last week the Archbishop of the Episcopal Church of Sudan and South Sudan Daniel Deng went to Lake State with Jawoliech (‘Holy Youths’) to campaign against inter-clan revenge killings among the Lake State communities.