AKOBO (Sudan) A massacre in April sent thousands of residents of this south Sudan district fleeing into the swampy wastes of the upper Nile. Last week, hunger drove them back into the clutches of the gunmen.

“What else could we do?” asked pregnant 20-year-old Nyakong Gatwech. “The food the United Nations gave us is too little for all the family.”

She was shot in the arm and slashed with a spear when she returned to her village but survived. Others were not so lucky.

Officials estimate at least 185 people, mostly women, were killed in a second raid on August 2 by a militia force of dozens of fighters.

The massacre was one of the deadliest single outbreaks of violence in the still largely lawless south of Sudan since a 2005 peace agreement ended two decades of civil war.

But it was not the first in Jonglei state, an ethnically divided region that was one of the worst hit by the long conflict with northern forces that left an estimated 1.5 million people dead and four million more homeless.

There have been repeated outbreaks of deadly fighting this year between the Lou Nuer and Murele ethnic groups which have left more than 1,000 people dead and many thousands more homeless.

UN officials have warned that the recent rate of violent deaths now surpasses those in Sudan's war-torn western region of Darfur.

Traditional rivalries over cattle and pasture were further poisoned by opposing allegiances during the 1983-2005 civil war, with the Lou Nuer mainly siding with the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement that now heads the autonomous regional government in the south and the Murele mainly supporting pro-government militias.

Gatwech said she had been escorted back to her village by former rebel fighters of the southern army but that there were not enough troops to ward off the Murele militiamen.

“We thought the soldiers could protect us, but they killed them too,” she said, adding that 11 troops had died and several more had been wounded.

Namach Duk, 12, was attacked by the militiamen in a small fishing camp outside the small Jonglei town of Akobo.

“They shot me in the leg as I ran towards the river. Then they stabbed me in the back with a spear and left me for dead,” she said, turning to show a jagged hole in her arm.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack as “heinous,” and the World Food Programme has warned that an escalation in violence will hamper efforts to deliver aid.

“It was a clear massacre - women and children were lying in the river and shot at close range,” said Akobo district commissioner Goi Jooyul Yol. “Tribal conflict has taken on a new dimension,” he added.

Lou Nuer village elder Chot Rom agreed that the traditional conflict with the Murele had taken a turn for the worse.

“In the past we have fought over cattle, but this is something different,” he said. “The Murele also abducted our children - we don't know if we will ever get them back, and we expect more attacks in the future,” he added, lying on a thin bed in a simple hospital ward where he was being treated for a gunshot wound to the groin.

Awash with weapons

The civil war years have left the region awash with weapons, something that the regional government has tried to tackle through a disarmament programme.

But some charge that a heavy-handed yet uneven implementation of the programme has left communities who have surrendered their weapons prey to others that have refused to reciprocate.

Others accuse civil war foe Khartoum of continuing to arm one community against the others as it did during the long years of conflict.

“People have guns from the war, but where are they getting the fresh ammunition they are using to kill civilians?” asked Yol. “The north supported militias here during the civil war, and that support has not wound down,” he said.

Akobo is isolated. Heavy rains force the closure of roads until December, and the main river route is blocked by enemies upstream.

The UN is flying food in, but it is a costly method and can only deliver limited supplies for the region's more than 19,000 homeless.

The last attempted shipment by river of more than 700 tonnes of World Food Programme food was sunk or stolen in June during an attack in which some 95 soldiers accompanying the delivery were killed.

At a feeding station in Akobo run by aid agency Medair, mothers patiently queue to have their children assessed by medical staff.

“Many children are suffering from malnutrition,” said Eunice Kavoi, a Medair nurse heading a special feeding programme for children.

“We fear the situation in terms of nutrition will get worse if nothing is done to fly in more food for the community.”

Officials promise the river will open soon, with some small boats arriving in Akobo from neighbouring Ethiopia carrying flour and beer, the first to do so in months.“We are cut off like an island with enemies all around,” said trader Peter Tut, selling bundles of firewood in the quiet market, where basic food supplies have run out.—AFP