More than 3,000 South Sudanese nationals fled into neighbouring Uganda on Tuesday after an eruption of violence in the border town of Pajok, with the attackers killing men, women and children indiscriminately.
The refugees are reported to have said that the attack was carried out by pro-government forces, though the South Sudanese government has not made any comments on the attack.
“If you ran, you got shot. If you got arrested you got slaughtered,” Reuters reports 35-year-old Lokang Jacky to say, drawing his index finger across his throat for emphasis.
Refugees and Ugandan intelligence officials said fighting started at 8:00 a.m. on Monday with a three-pronged assault on the town, which is normally home to 50,000 people.
The continued influx of South Sudanese refugees into Uganda prompted the country’s government to warn that it’s resources were fast getting strained, and they could soon not be able to take any more refugees.
The United Nations has listed South Sudan as Africa’s biggest refugee crisis and the third largest in the world after Syria and Afghanistan.
The world’s youngest nation descended into war in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his then deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup against his government. Machar denied the accusations but then went on to mobilize a rebel force to fight the government.
A peace deal signed in 2015 has continually been violated by both sides, at one time prompting the UN to warn of a possible genocide if the war was not stopped.
The international community has urged both factions to end the fighting and negotiate for peace, with the African Union Commission chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat particularly calling for the war to stop immediately.
Machar is currently in South Africa where he went to seek medical attention before any avenue back to South Sudan was shut.
