Calm returned to the South Sudanese border town of Maganis in Upper Nile state after violent clashes between Sudanese and South Sudanese citizens there last week.
Mohammed El Sheikh Mohammed, the SPLM-IO appointed commissioner of Manyo County, told Radio Tamazuj on Monday that they had discovered two dead bodies and found twelve wounded people, and that the process of quantifying the resultant losses was underway.
“The fighting last week was between South Sudanese citizens and our brothers from Sudan. As a result of clashes, houses were set on fire and we found two dead South Sudanese citizens and twelve wounded on our side but their condition is stable,” El Sheikh said.
He pointed out that the wounded are receiving treatment at a health facility in Manyo and that a committee was formed and is still working on assessing the consequential losses.
The commissioner revealed that the fighting erupted when the police prevented a Sudanese herder from watering his livestock from a water reservoir used by residents, but the matter soon developed into armed confrontations between citizens from the two countries resulting in the loss of lives.
El Sheikh accused people he said were spoilers for fuelling the situation in the Maganis area. The SPLM-IO official confirmed that calm had returned to the area after authorities from Sudan’s White Nile and South Sudan’s Upper Nile intervened.
Separately, Sudan News Agency (SUNA) quoted Abdelghaffar Ali Farajallah, Executive Director of the Al-Salam locality in White Nile State, as saying calm had returned to Maganis after hours of insecurity and tension.
Farajallah pointed out that the locality's security committee examined the situation in the area and communicated with the authorities in South Sudan to quell the violence and restore calm in the border town.