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S. Sudanese Refugees Release UN Staff in Congo

S. Sudanese Refugees Release UN Staff in Congo
S. Sudanese Refugees Release UN Staff in Congo

The United Nations said late Tuesday that 16 staff members taken hostage by unarmed South Sudanese refugees at a UN camp in a restive eastern province of the Democratic Republic of Congo have been released unharmed.

The UN peacekeeping department said in a statement released at UN headquarters in New York that “the camp is quiet and under full control” of peacekeepers at the Munigi base in North Kivu province, AP reported.

The UN Mission in DR Congo said earlier that the South Sudanese refugees took 13 staff members hostage, demanding they be sent to another East African country to avoid their forced return to South Sudan. Negotiations had continued into the evening.

The UN peacekeeping department said later there were 16 hostages.

“All staff have returned safely to their homes,” it said. “No casualties have been reported. The mission is investigating the incident.”

The South Sudanese refugees “are all disarmed, but they demand asylum in Uganda, Kenya or Ethiopia.”

The refugees are among a group of 530 who had fled South Sudan last year and have been staying at the UN camp in Munigi, north of the provincial capital Goma.

Most are part of the opposition movement of South Sudan’s former vice president, Riek Machar, and fled fighting with South Sudan forces loyal to President Salva Kiir that erupted in the capital, Juba.

The hostage-taking followed the repatriation to South Sudan on Friday of eight fighters from Machar’s Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement.

 

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