Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have condemned the recent attacks against civilians in Bor, Bentiu and elsewhere in South Sudan. They say that are “particularly outraged by deliberate and targeted killings of civilians in hospitals, churches, UN peacekeeping bases and other places where people’s rights should be sacrosanct.”
“Humanitarian partners and aid agencies pledge to continue to stand with all civilians in South Sudan, whoever they are – in particular with the children, women and elderly people who bear the brunt of this conflict,” reads a statement issued today by the Humanitarian Country Team, a coordinating body of NGOs and UN officials.
The statement says also that emergency surgical teams have been deployed to Bentiu and Bor, boosting the health response to the recent violence. They are also providing food, shelter, water, and other services to civilians sheltering inside UN peacekeeping bases.
Toby Lanzer, the top UN humanitarian official in the country, issued a separate statement yesterday saying, “I am deeply saddened and frustrated by the violence that has ravaged Bentiu and Bor in the past 72 hours. There is no excuse for direct attacks on civilians, or on those risking their own lives to protect them.”
“These events show, yet again, the pointlessness of the violence engulfing South Sudan. The current cycle of revenge will get the people of this country nowhere. It wrecks the present, and casts a dark shadow over what should have been a very bright future,” says Lanzer.
“I call on the parties to the conflict to immediately cease hostilities and resume meaningful negotiations to find a political solution to their differences. And I call on the wisdom and compassion of all South Sudanese, from all the diverse communities that make up this country, to do whatever they can to put an end to the fighting, before more innocent men, women and children are lost,” he adds.
UN Photo: Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General