Kei Emmanuel Duku<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Babeto Bus Company is counting losses after its bus with registration number SSD 0892 travelling from Juba to Kampala fell in an ambush on Tuesday morning near Lakarakak between Jablen Area and Kubi. \u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Tuesday\u2019s attack left one passenger dead on the spot, and 7 civilians injured including one army officer belonging to the National Security Service – Internal Security Bureau, according to the army.<\/p>\n Fourteen other passengers are reportedly missing.<\/p>\n Addressing the Media on Tuesday afternoon, South Sudan People\u2019s Defense Forces (SSPDF) Spokesperson, Maj. Gen Lul Ruai Koang said majority of the injured passengers were students going to Uganda.<\/p>\n Gen Koang, however, blamed the attack on National Salvation Front rebels-NAS forces led by Gen: Thomas Cirilo Swaka.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bus was set ablaze, and our forces quickly rushed to the ground, persuaded the attackers, and they were heading towards Lobonok Payam of Juba County, heading towards an Island where we strongly believe their base is located this clearly shows that NAS is responsible for the attack,\u201d said Gen. Koang.<\/p>\n The SSPDF Spokesperson further noted that an unconfirmed number of more than 10 passengers are still missing and they would have been abducted by the NAS forces.<\/p>\n He, however, described Tuesday\u2019s attack as an act of \u2018cowardice\u2019, saying NAS forces should be considered a regional threat to security and safety of civilians.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have conflicting reports of missing passengers, our sources told us 7 are missing, and others are saying up to 14 passengers are missing, the person killed was a Ugandan national, and several others were Sudanese citizens, if NAS aims to liberate South Sudanese as they claim, why are they attacking soft targets killing different nationality instead of attacking our (government) instalments so they (NAS) have become a regional threat and this act needs to be condemned and brought to book,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n Since the beginning of this year, there have been no major attacks along the Juba- Nimule Highway.<\/p>\n The last time a similar incident happened was in 2022, where 11 lives were lost despite several army presence along the highway.<\/p>\n Maj. Gen. Koang said the attack happened in between two of the mounted checkpoints along the highway.<\/p>\n He said the rebels explored weak points where there were no security checkpoints installed in the areas.<\/p>\n He assured the passengers travelling along the highway of the government’s commitment to installing more security personnel will be provided to escorts for convoy travelers on the road to Nimule.<\/p>\n \u201cIf their business has to become attacking civilians, we will increase our presence on the highways or go to their hideouts and smoke them out,\u201d he concluded.<\/p>\n One humanitarian worker known only as Julius was leading a team of staff for fieldwork to Aru Junction from Nyerjebe.<\/p>\n He said he became suspicious after travelling for more than 5-6 km without encountering any vehicles coming from Nimule town to Juba. As a result, he decided to stop his team from continuing with the journey.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were travelling without knowing so when we reached Kubi, I together with my team had to stop because the road looked scary, we had to confirm what is exactly happening along the road because usually around half past 7, the buses from Juba would have passed so we stopped but shortly one soldier passed on high speed and they were people coming in front of us and told us that there was an ambush on a bus so we had to turn back,\u201d he narrated.<\/p>\n One of the traditional Chiefs from the area spoke to No.1 Citizen Newspaper over the phone and mentioned that the attack had frightened many passengers and caused a traffic hold-up in the morning.<\/p>\n However, by the afternoon, normal traffic from Juba to Nimule and vice versa had resumed.<\/p>\n He added that the deceased and the 3 other injured passengers were rushed to Nimule Civil Hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are three Sudanese nationals and 1 South Sudanese national who were injured, but by afternoon hours normal traffic had already resumed and cars were moving normally along the highway because once someone has committed a crime he can not stay in one place and I believe the attackers have run very far,\u201d said the chief.<\/p>\n National Salvation Front has not issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kei Emmanuel Duku Babeto Bus Company is counting losses after its bus with registration number SSD 0892 travelling from Juba to Kampala fell in an ambush on Tuesday morning near Lakarakak between Jablen Area and Kubi. \u00a0 Tuesday\u2019s attack left one passenger dead on the spot, and 7 civilians[Read More…]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":28963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,79],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/SSPDF-soldiers-arrive-at-the-ambush-scene-along-the-Juba-Nimule-Highway-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28961"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28964,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28961\/revisions\/28964"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.onecitizendaily.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}