JUBA // Hundreds of armed attackers from a South Sudanese tribe that suffered a devastating assault last month charged into three villages, burned them to the ground and killed 57 people, an official said Friday, an act that perpetuates a cycle of revenge attacks in the world's newest nation.
Some 400 men from the Murle ethnic group attacked the Lou Nuer villages on Wednesday, said Simon Hoth, a county commissioner in Jonglei state, the site of devastating violence the last three weeks. Hoth, a member of the Lou Nuer, said 57 were killed and 40 people were missing and likely abducted.
Twenty-five women and 23 children were among those killed in the Uror county attack, Hoth said. Fifty-two people were wounded.
"They have butchered these people," he said. There was no immediate independent confirmation of Hoth's figures.
Murle fighters were accused of killing 22 people in similar attacks in neighboring Akobo county on Sunday.
Uror was the scene of a larger Murle attack in August in which an estimated 600 Lou Nuer were killed. Those attacks prompted a series of retaliatory raids by the Lou Nuer in Pibor county beginning Dec. 23. One Murle official has said that 3,000 Murle died in those attacks. Neither the central government or the U.N. has confirmed that figure, but scores are feared to have died.
The government of South Sudan recently declared Jonglei state a disaster area. The U.N. mission in South Sudan estimates at least 60,000 people have been affected by the ongoing violence. The UN operation says it has launched one of the most "complex and expensive" humanitarian operations since the end of the Sudanese civil war in 2005.
South Sudan became the world's newest country last year after decades of war with Sudan, but it is now experiencing massive internal violence.
But with retaliation attacks occurring more and more frequently, there is little hope for an end to these clashes. Cattle raiding is at the heart of the tribal clashes. The Lou Nuer are said to have stolen tens of thousands of cattle from the Murle in the December attack.
"Arms are still in the hands of the civilian population," said Jonglei Gov. Kual Manyang Juuk. "And these attacks will continue, definitely."
Juuk said the government is sending police to patrol the area, but Jonglei's extreme underdevelopment makes securing the area difficult. "This is a challenge for the government. They don't live in formal towns," he said.
Hoth said Uror's residents have little hope of being kept safe. "People are now living in fear because the whole county has no security. The U.N. is not there and the (South Sudan military) is not there."
The area is also desperately short of health care to treat those hurt in the fighting.
Heather Whelan, a spokeswoman for humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, said the group airlifted 12 seriously wounded patients from its clinic in Yuai to receive surgical treatment in neighboring Upper Nile state. Whelan said five of the victims were women and "six were children under 5, with beating or gunshot wounds."
The International Organization for Migration said Friday that an IOM convoy of four trucks carrying kits that include kitchen utensils, soap, jerry cans, blankets, plastic sheeting and mosquito nets is en route to Pibor town in Jonglei. The convoy - the first by road since the recent violence began - will be delivered to about 7,500 people.
Teams
India (playing XI): Virat Kohli (c), Ajinkya Rahane, Rohit Sharma, Mayank Agarwal, Cheteshwar Pujara, Hanuma Vihari, Ravichandran Ashwin, Ravindra Jadeja, Wriddhiman Saha (wk), Ishant Sharma, Mohammed Shami
South Africa (squad): Faf du Plessis (c), Temba Bavuma, Theunis de Bruyn, Quinton de Kock, Dean Elgar, Zubayr Hamza, Keshav Maharaj, Aiden Markram, Senuran Muthusamy, Lungi Ngidi, Anrich Nortje, Vernon Philander, Dane Piedt, Kagiso Rabada, Rudi Second
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
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Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
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The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, second leg:
Liverpool (0) v Barcelona (3), Tuesday, 11pm UAE
Game is on BeIN Sports
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FINAL SCORES
Fujairah 130 for 8 in 20 overs
(Sandy Sandeep 29, Hamdan Tahir 26 no, Umair Ali 2-15)
Sharjah 131 for 8 in 19.3 overs
(Kashif Daud 51, Umair Ali 20, Rohan Mustafa 2-17, Sabir Rao 2-26)
The biog
Name: Atheja Ali Busaibah
Date of birth: 15 November, 1951
Favourite books: Ihsan Abdel Quddous books, such as “The Sun will Never Set”
Hobbies: Reading and writing poetry
How much sugar is in chocolate Easter eggs?
- The 169g Crunchie egg has 15.9g of sugar per 25g serving, working out at around 107g of sugar per egg
- The 190g Maltesers Teasers egg contains 58g of sugar per 100g for the egg and 19.6g of sugar in each of the two Teasers bars that come with it
- The 188g Smarties egg has 113g of sugar per egg and 22.8g in the tube of Smarties it contains
- The Milky Bar white chocolate Egg Hunt Pack contains eight eggs at 7.7g of sugar per egg
- The Cadbury Creme Egg contains 26g of sugar per 40g egg
Formula Middle East Calendar (Formula Regional and Formula 4)
Round 1: January 17-19, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 2: January 22-23, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 3: February 7-9, Dubai Autodrome – Dubai
Round 4: February 14-16, Yas Marina Circuit – Abu Dhabi
Round 5: February 25-27, Jeddah Corniche Circuit – Saudi Arabia
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
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WHAT IS GRAPHENE?
It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were experimenting with sticky tape and graphite, the material used as lead in pencils.
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In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics.
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