By Bida Elly David
The spokesperson of South Sudan National Police Service yesterday said at least three defiant soldiers were killed and two apprehended over the weekend following random shootings at Jebel Kujur suburbs.
The spokesperson of National Police Service Maj. Gen. Daniel Justin told No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper yesterday that they received the report of sporadic gunshots that caused unrest to the inhabitants at the Jebel Kujur surrounding suburbs.
He said that the errant soldiers allegedly caused the gunfire stir amid claims that they have not been promoted into certain military ranks by the army for reasons best known by them.
“Actually, they were complaining of not being promoted and something of that kind. They started shooting on our forces, and as a result some of our soldiers were wounded. We managed to bring the situation under control and some of the suspects were arrested,” he said.
The police spokesperson assured that the situation has been arrested as he urged the residents to keep calm.
“We need our citizens to remain calm as we carry our task,” he jagged out.
Daniel Justin further said that the random shooting by the military crooks planted unrest to the inhabitants as most of them scattered with fear to hiding locations for their safety but calm returned after they had deployed security forces to arrest the jeopardizing situation.
He said despite the promotion claims by the soldiers, the police had laid an investigative strategy to further dig out the major cause of the random shooting without genuine reason.
“The investigation will give us more details about the root cause. The People were panicking not knowing what was happening, so we decided to go to SSBC to assure our people in the affected areas and beyond that the situation was calm,” he said.
“It was actually at around 3 PM in Jebel (Kujur) area. Three soldiers were involved in a shooting. So, we got the report and our forces went on the ground to arrest the situation,” he said.
Justin underscored further re-enforcement of multiple forces in the affected areas as well as urged the public to avoid random running to mitigate uncertain injuries saying that the situation has culminated and some of the suspects were apprehended awaiting investigation.
In his part Emmanuel Joel, a resident at Hai Rock city area said that the gunshots happened as a joke since rocks in most of the times undergo breakage through heaving machines that made sounds in form of guns.
“We took the gunshots as a normal thing thinking that the stone breakers were on their duty but things turned apart when it escalated and people started running at random,” Joel stated.
“We became confused and never understood what happened until the police intervened. Most shops closed immediately after the gunshots total insecurity but thank God the police came into our rescue before casualties against civilians,” he said.
However, when contacted by No.1 Citizen Daily Newspaper over the matter, South Sudan People’s Defense Forces (SSPDF) spokesperson Lul Ruai Koang, declined to comment referring this paper to get information from the police saying they are the department that arrested the situation after the incident.