Awwal 10, 1432 / April 14, 2011, SPA -- More than 800 people have been killed this year in a rise in violence in south Sudan before its independence in July, the United Nations said on Wednesday. Southern Sudanese voted to separate from the north in a January referendum, promised to them as part of a 2005 peace accord that ended decades of civil war in Sudan. This year 151 incidents across nine of the south's ten states have killed 801 people and displaced nearly 94,000 more, according to the United Nations. "We are worried, with at least seven militia that are active, with inter-communal violence continuing, with the LRA active in Western Equatorial. This is not a good picture," said Lise Grande, the United Nation's senior humanitarian official in the south. Grande said the wave of conflict in the last two months had stalled the headway needed in building the new African nation starting almost from scratch and the rainy season would soon make much of the region inaccessible. "We can't start winding down an emergency operation if 100,000 people have been displaced," she said in a news conference, adding that emergency relief was now underway in about half of southern counties. Grande singled out Uganda's LRA rebels as posing a persistent threat to any hope of the south feeding itself. "LRA attacks keep happening every couple of weeks and when it happens people become terrorized, they don't plant...this has a big impact on food security around the south as a whole," she said.
