A South Sudanese soldier belonging to the country’s ruling SPLA-Juba faction fired two bullets at close range into a US Embassy vehicle, according to a diplomat. No one was injured in the shooting.
US Ambassador Charles Twining said he was traveling in an armored diplomatic convoy at 7:30 p.m. on 19 October when a soldier in a military motorcade fired twice at a US embassy vehicle traveling behind his own car.
Twining said his convoy’s “follow car” – a vehicle mandated to travel with US ambassadors – was stuck in traffic as the SPLA-Juba military motorcade approached.
As the US follow car moved aside, a soldier jumped from his vehicle and fired two shots into windows of the US vehicle before returning to his own vehicle, according to the ambassador.
“We have bulletproof glass, thankfully, because it put two big holes in them,” Twining told a reporter in South Sudan in an interview.
The spokesman of the SPLA-Juba faction Col. Philip Aguer denied that any shots were fired and instead said the soldier hit the US vehicle with the butt of his gun.
Aguer said the soldier who damaged the US embassy vehicle was part of a security detail of a motorcade carrying Vice President James Wani Igga.
The vice president is typically guarded by members of SPLA-Juba’s Tiger Division, which is also called the ‘Presidential Guard.’
Marial Chanuong, the commander of this unit, has been named by the US Treasury Department to a list of individuals subject to financial sanctions for human rights abuses and obstructing peace efforts in South Sudan.
Chanuong’s troops participated in carrying out mass ethnic killings in Juba in December 2013, according to human rights reports.
Col. Philiip Aguer has claimed that the soldier who damaged the embassy vehicle has been arrested, but there is no independent verification of this. Aguer has not yet publically confirmed the name, rank and unit of the accused soldier.
File photo: Marial Chanuong