This report summarizes recent developments in South Sudan’s continuing civil war and is based on information received by Radio Tamazuj. It is meant to provide a general overview of major events and conflict trends rather than detailing the specifics of conflict events, which are usually difficult to verify.
Conflict situation overview, 29 May 2015:
After advances toward oil fields last week, SPLA-IO rebels and aligned forces of General Johnson Olony made no further apparent gains this week but instead lost ground to government forces, which have recaptured the east bank towns Melut (on 20 May), Akoka and Malakal (on 25 May).
Government spokesmen claimed that their forces inflicted crippling losses on the opposition forces but the rebels downplayed the fighting. General Olony continues to control large territories on the west of the Nile.
In neighboring Unity State, the other main battleground state, government forces have withdrawn from a number of areas in the state’s south, which they had overrun during an offensive earlier this month.
Aid workers reported that only some of the population of Leer town have returned after having fled to the bush. The aid workers had also evacuated and only made their first return visits this week.
The commissioner of Rumbek North County was killed in an ambush late last week. Rumbek North remains vulnerable to possible rebel counter-attacks from southern Unity State, as does Mayom County in northwest Unity State. The United Nations peacekeeping mission has little or no presence in the areas most affected by the government’s April-May military offensive, nor in neighboring areas.
Farther west in the Bahr al Ghazal region, the government faces incursions into Northern Bahr al Ghazal State by forces said to be loyal to General Dau Aturjong, a former gubernatorial candidate hailing from the state. These forces moved south from Darfur into the northern part of Aweil North County, according to a local official, but they are not reported to have advanced far into the state.
Meanwhile, the security situation deteriorated rapidly in Western Equatoria State since last week. Local youths and SPLA forces clashed in Mundri on 22 May. WFP-contracted trucks traveling along a major supply route through Mundri West County into the country’s hunger-stricken northwest were looted.
Fresh SPLA units that were uninvolved in the clashes with the armed youths, the so-called ‘arrow boys’, were brought to Mundri to control the situation. Many civilians remain displaced from the area. State officials have denied that there is any rebellion in the area, instead implying that SPLA troops antagonized local people and killed the executive director of the county.
Photo: The Red Cross evacuating residents from Leer who were wounded in recent fighting (ICRC)