Sept 29, 2016(Nyamilepedia) —- On Tuesday night, heavy shooting broke out in Tongpiny residential areas of South Sudan capital, Juba, and quickly escalated to Ministerial Complex and other suburbs of the city.
That shooting was contained that night but panic remains in the capital, specially in areas occupied by members of Murle ethnic group.
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Although the government wanted the public to believe that the heavy exchange of fire was between the police and unidentified “criminals”, president Salva Kiir summoned Lt. Gen. David Yau Yau on wednesday morning to explain the defection of his former deputy and the shooting on Tuesday night.
According to inside investigation, the shooting was ignited by an attempt to disarm bodyguards of Lt. Gen. Khalid Botrous Bora, the leader of Murle’s Cobra rebel groups that recently announced their defection from the government.
Together with Gen. Yau Yau, who is also the Deputy Minister of Defense, the government is hunting for “criminals” but targeting members of Murle ethnic group.
Within the last 5 days, at least 7 policemen and soldiers from Murle ethnic group have gone missing.
According to stories from their family members, the predominantly Murle service men and women were picked from their house between wednesday evening and Sunday.
“They came asking if our neighbor is a Murle. We said we don’t know. They went and took two men out by force. One man was a policeman” Said Alkanjolo Wani whose neighbors dissapeared on Thursday night.
Wani said that there has been search for Murle men in his Tongpiny neighborhood since Thursday.
Other residence who spoke out on condition of anonymotiy reported that member of national secuirty have took a police man of Murle origin at a checkpoint in Gudele but left other non-murle policemen unquestioned.
In an interview with Nation Police Service, Brig. Daniel Justin on Wednesday, he denied the shooting and said it was an exchange of gunfire with suspected criminals saying that it has no connection with Cobra or Murle servicemen.
“Some criminals tried to enter a hotel near Dr. John Grarang International School.” Brigadier Daniel said.
He said no one has been arrested but the army and police were still chasing the suspects.
The police admitted that the fighting started at 10pm that night and it went on to 11pm at night.
“They were trying to chase those criminals and on Wednesday police went to the place of incident and the investigation are still going on. Upto now we have not identified them yet, and they were trying to loot a place in that area,” Brig. Daniel explained.
The police went to assure the population in Juba that the situation is calm and people should not panic.
He further explains that areas like Tongpiny and Munuki have been registering an increased number of crimes within the last three week of this month but said most of the criminals have been arrested.
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