At least 103 people have been killed in a militant attack on a convoy of people and their cattle in South Sudan’s Jonglei state.

A group of heavily-armed men loyal to militant commander David Yau Yau along with members of the Murle community carried out an ambush attack on a group of migrating people belonging to ethnic Lou Nuer families on February 8, Jonglei’s governor Kuol Manyang said on Sunday.

“They came under attack from people in a huge force,” Manyang stated. “There are many children and women missing. Their fate is not yet known.”

Over a dozen soldiers escorting the people were also killed in the assault.

A South Sudanese army spokesman confirmed the incident and said that almost 500 people were still missing.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said it had sent medics to treat the wounded.

More than 600 people have been killed in ethnic violence in Jonglei in recent months, according to the UN.

Yau Yau rebelled against the government in Juba after he was defeated in the elections of April 2010. However, he accepted amnesty in June 2011, a month before South Sudan won independence from Sudan after decades of civil war.


Juba says Sudan supports Yau Yau and airlifts weapons and supplies to remote corners of Jonglei. However, Khartoum denies the allegation.

South Sudan’s Jonglei state was one of the hardest hit in Sudan’s north-south civil war during the period of 1983-2005.

In July 2011, South Sudan voted to break away from Sudan following a two-decade civil war that killed about two million people in Africa’s biggest country.

The new oil-rich nation is one of the least-developed countries in the world where one in every seven children dies before the age of five.