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Armed youth from South Sudan's Warrap State carried out the
raids into the neighboring Abyei region, said Bulis Koch, the
information minister for Abyei.
Abyei is an oil-rich area that is jointly administered by South
Sudan and Sudan, which have both staked claims to it.
Koch told Reuters that 52 people, among them women, children and
police officers, were killed during the attacks on Saturday. A
further 64 people were wounded.
"Because of the current dire security situation at hand, which
has created fears and panic we have imposed a curfew," he said.
A Ghanaian peacekeeper from a United Nations force based in
Abyei was killed when its base in Agok town was attacked amid
the violence, the U.N. Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA)
said on Sunday.
Koch said hundreds of displaced civilians had sought shelter at
a UNISFA base.
William Wol, Warrap State's information minister, said his
government would conduct a joint investigation with the Abyei
administration.
There have been repeated clashes in Abyei between rival factions
of the Dinka ethnic group related to the location of
administrative boundary that is a source of significant tax
revenues.
Koch said Dinka youth from Warrap and the forces of a rebel
leader from the Nuer ethnic group carried out the attacks
against Dinkas and Nuers in Abyei.
Civil war in South Sudan, fought largely along ethnic lines
between Dinkas and Nuers, caused hundreds of thousands of deaths
between 2013 and 2018.
Since then, routine clashes among a patchwork of armed groups
have continued to kill and displace large numbers of civilians.
Fighting in Abyei in November killed at least 32 people.
(Reporting by Waakhe Simon Wudu, Writing by Bhargav Acharya,
Editing by Aaron Ross and Angus MacSwan)
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