Returnees camping in schools in Morobo County after fleeing Uganda after raids by UPDF [Photo: courtesy]

Thousands of South Sudanese refugees have returned to Morobo County after the Ugandan army carried out a three-day operation near the border area.

Last week, Ugandan media reported that the country’s forces began relocating people from the border area in Koboko District, following rising tensions between South Sudan’s government and opposition groups.

A journalist based in Morobo County told Eye Radio that the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF) arrested South Sudanese refugees in Busia, Mugujai, and Keji-Areya after gunshots were heard from the South Sudan side of the border last week.

The refugees had been living in camps in Uganda’s Koboko District since 2016, after violence forced them to flee their homes.

But after the recent military operation, they abandoned the camps and returned to Central Equatoria State.

“On Tuesday of, I could not remember the date but there were gunshots around the South Sudan border, but later on these gunshots escalated to the Uganda border,” said Vita Henry, a journalist at Morobo FM.

“So, in the morning, that’s when now the UPDF decided to enter those three villages and started forceful displacement, like arresting south Sudanese who were there to be taken to a place called Ikeri,” he added.

Henry said those who fled are now sheltering in schools and health centers in Nyarigolo village, Panyume Payam of Morobo County.

He said the centers are overcrowded and lack basic services like food, water, and shelter.

“The condition of the people is at a state, honestly, the facility where they are based currently could not even accommodate like a hundred people, but then people are just there, children are there, elders are there, and the women are there,” he further explained.

Henry also said the security situation in the area remains tense after recent clashes between government troops and SPLM-IO forces.

Although government forces control Morobo town, armed groups are still seen in nearby areas.

“Of people moving, and the civilians, those who are being harassed sometimes, there are people who go to them with the guns. We cannot know now if they are the IO forces, if they are the government forces, but there is a bit of these groups that sometimes come, take people’s property, take people’s roads, they go,” he said.