AFP, ADDIS ABABA: Armed men from South Sudan have killed around 140 people and kidnapped a number of others in a cross-border raid into Ethiopia, the Ethiopian government said Sunday.
Ethnic Murle gunmen “attacked near Gambella and killed close to 140 people. They also abducted some of them,” Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Tewolde Muluteg told AFP.
The Murle, a tribe from South Sudan based in the eastern Jonglei region, often stage raids to steal cattle.
They attacked the Nuer tribe, one of the two main ethnic groups in South Sudan, but who also live across the border in Ethiopia.
The western Ethiopian region of Gambella, which borders South Sudan, is also home to some 272,000 South Sudanese refugees who have fled the civil war that erupted in their country in December 2013.
“Our forces have been in pursuit of the attackers and they decimated scores of them,” Muluteg said, without indicating whether the Ethiopian forces entered South Sudan territory.