A car­a­van of boats deliv­er­ing food aid to South­ern Sudan was attacked by tribal fight­ers. 800 tons of food has either been looted or destroyed from boats try­ing to give the food to the rival fac­tion. The U.N.s World Food Pro­gramme tried to fly in some food Sat­ur­day, but it was far short of what is needed to feed to people.

From this Reuters story that we found at The New York Times, we learn more details about the attacks.

About 40 south­ern Sudanese sol­diers and civil­ians were killed when tribal fight­ers ambushed boats car­ry­ing food aid, the lat­est in a string of eth­nic attacks threat­en­ing a frag­ile peace deal, offi­cials said Sun­day.

Mem­bers of the Jikany Nuer group opened fire Fri­day on 27 boats loaded with emer­gency rations des­tined for an area con­trolled by the rival Lou Nuer tribe, the United Nations World Food Pro­gram said.

Hun­dreds have been killed and more than 135,000 dis­placed in south­ern Sudan this year in tribal killings. The vio­lence is rooted in long­stand­ing feuds over cat­tle, aggra­vated by polit­i­cal dis­con­tent and weapons left over from two decades of civil war.

A United Nations offi­cial said the attack on Fri­day was thought to be the first in which south­ern Sudanese sol­diers had suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant casu­al­ties in the tribal clashes.

The min­is­ter of infor­ma­tion for Upper Nile State, Thon Mom, said the attack killed at least 40 peo­ple, includ­ing troops from the Sudan People’s Lib­er­a­tion Army, the for­mer rebel group based in south­ern Sudan. The troops were escort­ing the con­voy south on the Sobat River to the town of Akobo.

“Women and chil­dren who were on the boats were also killed, either directly by bul­lets or by drown­ing after jump­ing into the river,” said Malaak Ayuen Ajok, an army spokesman.

He said the Jikany Nuer fight­ers had demanded to search some of the barges, south of the set­tle­ment of Nasir, sus­pect­ing they were car­ry­ing arms and ammu­ni­tion to the Lou Nuer.

They searched one barge, find­ing only sorghum and other rations, but opened fire when the rest of the con­voy con­tin­ued on its jour­ney, he added.

The offi­cials said they were await­ing more detailed infor­ma­tion on the attack. “It could be less than 40 killed,” Mr. Ajok said. “It could be more. We should find out later today.”

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