General Cirilo denies responsibility for highway attack

JUBA – South Sudan’s holdout opposition National Salvation Front (NAS) led by General Thomas Cirilo Swaka has denied responsibility for Monday’s killing of 5 people including two nuns following a highway ambush.

The government in Juba and South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA), a rebel alliance comprising different groups including NAS, are talking in Rome to end the insurgency.

With speculations that rebels were responsible for the attack, Kiir threatened yesterday to pull out from the Rome peace process over the highway killing.

However, NAS spokesman Samuel Suba Manasse denied that his group was responsible for the attack saying they have no presence in the area and instead blamed the SSPDF.

“First of all, the press statement of President Kiir has no meaning and I think he is just trying to avoid blame. There is nothing called SSPDF which provides security in the country. The country has collapsed,” Suba said, according to Radio Tamazuj.

“The areas of Jebelein and Nesitu are controlled by the SSPDF and there are no rebels in these places, there is no NAS, and this is not the first time ambushes have taken place there. It is only that the nuns are well-known people; otherwise, common people are killed there all the time. It is the SSPDF who are robbing and killing people in those places,” he added.

He said the president had a heavy deployment of his forces along the road because he was in Nimule with the Vice President (Wani Igga).

“How can another group carry out an attack on the road with all that deployment? It is rubbish. Several times, SSPDF elements have been arrested by the National Security and police for robbing and kidnapping people on the road. They are always displayed on national television. These are the same people who did this. Even the Tiger (presidential guards are thieves and have been arrested several times in Juba for robbery,” Suba said.

On the President’s threat to withdraw from the Sant’Egidio mediated Rome Talks, Suba said President Kiir is free to walk out and blamed the latter for going back on several previous peace accords.

“On withdrawing from the Sant’Egidio Rome talks, he is free to do it after all he has abrogated many agreements. ARCSS 2015, he abrogated it, this one 2018 (R-ARCSS) he is failing it and has abrogated it. So what is special with Sant’Egidio? He can walk out,” Suba charged.

He said one of the nuns who survived the attack narrated that one of the soldiers involved was very tall implying it was SSPDF and that it was subject to public interpretation.

Asked if he was implying that they did not have tall soldiers in NAS, Suba said, “So does that mean it is NAS. It is subject to interpretation. It does not mean that when the president comes out with a press release, then everybody must believe. You have to investigate the whole thing.”

Relatedly, the South Sudan Opposition Movements Alliance (SSOMA) in a statement earlier today denounced and condemned the attack and subsequent killing of innocent civilians and the nuns and heaped the blame on the government.

“SSOMA denounces and condemns in the strongest terms possible this heinous killing of innocent civilians and members of the clergy. We hold the regime of Salva Kiir responsible for the ongoing attacks along roads, ethnic fights in the villages, and disappearances inside the towns of South Sudan,” the SSOMA statement read.

SSOMA said the recurring attacks on civilians and breakdown in rule of law and order is indicative of a failed state and called on the international community and relevant organizations to institute investigations.

“Alas, these recurring ambushes, attacks, and killings of innocent people along the major roads and towns in South Sudan is a clear major undeniable proof of the total breakdown of law and order and a complete lack of security protection that is indicative of the failed regime of Salva Kiir,” SSOMA statement said.

“SSOMA calls on the International Community and relevant organizations to investigate these barbaric killings as there is an alarming rate of attacks on Church personnel and innocent civilians across South Sudan.”