On the eve of Pope Francis’ visit to the nation on Friday, clashes between cattle herders and militia members claimed the lives of 27 people in South Sudan’s Central Equatoria state.
The pope is scheduled to arrive in South Sudan from the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo in an effort to jumpstart the peace process and put an end to clashes that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and been largely fought along ethnic lines.
According to Kajo-Keji county commissioner Phanuel Dumo, herders retaliated on Thursday when rebel militants from a gang killed six members of a herding community, killing 21 civilians in the neighborhood, including five children and a pregnant woman.
The main participants in the civil war from 2013 to 2018 signed a peace agreement in 2018, which considerably reduced violence in South Sudan in recent years, but smaller-scale conflicts between competing communities still erupt on occasion.
The pope’s travel companion, the Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed his horror at the most recent killings.
“It is a story too often heard across South Sudan. I again appeal for a different way: for South Sudan to come together for a just peace,” he said on Twitter.