A 27-year-old driver working for South Sudan Red Cross (SSRC) in Torit town of South Sudan’s Eastern Equatoria state was beaten by a group of youth on Monday. SSRC has since suspended operations in the area saying armed youth stormed their offices on the same day in Torit and assaulted their staff members.
SSPDF and SPLA-IO to jointly contain insecurity in Eastern Equatoria
The Eastern Equatoria State council of ministers, during their third security meeting on Monday, resolved that the SSPDF and SPLA-IO forces will work together to combat spiking insecurity in the state.
This resolution was made during an extraordinary security meeting to introduce the SPLM-IO nominated deputy governor, Mary Lodira, who arrived in Torit over the weekend, a month since she was appointed.
Patrick Oting Cyprian, the minister of information and government spokesperson, told Radio Tamazuj, “It was a very good meeting for us to know one another. How the SPLA-IO soldiers can work along with the SSPDF, was the proposal from the minister of peacebuilding who is from SPLM/A-IO. He proposed that the government is welcome all the times and in case of anything they can get the soldiers from the SPLA-IO to escort the governor on official missions.”
Aerial view of Torit Town. [Photo: Radio Tamazuj]
A 40-year-old soldier attached to the Wounded Heroes Unit, Joseph Olima, was killed during a cattle raid in the outskirts of Torit town last Saturday.
Armed men attacked four kraals in the same location at different times on Saturday, rustling 1,727 head of cattle from kraals in the Safari Link area and another 200 from Hai Lotuko Kraal outside the Eastern Equatoria State capital.
Maj. Justine Kleopus Takuru, the police spokesperson in Torit told Radio Tamazuj, “It was on the 13 March, Saturday, the report came to us at around 1:30 pm from a civilian called Mayen Machok Garang, 44, a resident of Hai Silak near the military barracks here that they took their animals grazing around Oudo. Some people came and raided the cattle.”