UN to send peacekeepers home over South Sudan inaction

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Al Jazeera News :
The United Nations has said that it will send peacekeepers home over a “lack of responsiveness” during a bloody attack on a UN-run camp in South Sudan in February.
UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous acknowledged on Wednesday that an investigation had found “inadequacies” in peacekeepers’ response when gunmen in military uniforms stormed the camp in the northeastern town of Malakal on February 17 and 18, firing on civilians and setting shelters ablaze.
The attack on the camp, where about 48,000 people were sheltering, left at least 40 dead and 123 wounded.
Nearly 20,000 people lost their homes after they were torched by the attackers based on the occupants’ tribal affiliation. “There was a lack of responsiveness by some, a lack of understanding of the rules of engagement by some,” said Ladsous, who refused to single out any individuals.
“I will not name names but there will be repatriations of units and of individual officers.”
At the time of the attack, the peacekeeping force was made up of contingents from Ethiopia, India and Rwanda.
“I can assure you that there will be a follow-up as there has been in other theatres of operation,” Ladsous said.
Initial findings of an internal UN investigation found that “there was confusion with respect to command and control” and “a lack of coordination among the various civilian and uniformed peacekeepers” during the attack.
A UN military official in Malakal told Al Jazeera that Ethiopian peacekeepers had abandoned their posts during the attack. The same official said that the peacekeeping contingent from Rawanda had asked, in writing, for permission to fire their weapons as the base came under attack, even though peacekeepers are licensed to use force to protect civilians. “Attackers entered in the backyard of a UN base and proceeded to shoot and kill civilians and to systematically burn down large parts of the camp, as peacekeepers responded slowly and ineffectively,” said Matt Wells, a senior adviser on peacekeeping at the Center for Civilians in Conflict.
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