The former chairman of the Cobra Faction, David Yau Yau, has dismissed reports that gunmen who crossed to Ethiopia last week and attacked Gambella were militias.

This is in response to a statement by the Governor of Boma State, Baba Medan, who told Eye Radio on Tuesday that militias the government had been fighting in the state carried out the cross-border attack.

Mr Medan did not name any group, but there have been reports of clashes between members of the former Cobra Faction and SPLA in Pibor in the past few months.

Mr Yau Yau says his forces have been integrated into the army and suggested that the gunmen could have been armed civilians.

“What we discovered actually is not an armed group; it is not any governmental organizations.  These are pure civilians who normally raid across the region,” former security advisor Peter Guzulu Mzee said on behalf of Gen Yau Yau.

“And we know this for many years. Most of the Murle youth used to come to Bor; they went up to Nuer and of course they went up to Ethiopia.”

The Ethiopian government announced on Tuesday that it had intensified an operation to free some 100 women and children who were abducted in the attack.