JUBA, South Sudan — South Sudan imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew on January 17, 2025, after revenge attacks on Sudanese people and businesses left three people dead, seven wounded and several Sudanese-owned homes burned in Aweil.
Police said the clashes broke out in Juba and the north-western town of Aweil after shocking videos circulated online showing Sudanese soldiers apparently killing South Sudanese civilians in Wad Madani, Sudan. President Salva Kiir called for calm and urged citizens not to take the law into their own hands, while police said the curfew would run from 18:00 to 06:00 to prevent violations of public and private property.
The violence quickly spread beyond a single neighbourhood. Three houses belonging to Sudanese nationals were set on fire in Aweil, and a second police source told the BBC that officers rescued 45 Sudanese traders in Juba, where they were being protected at a police station. The response shows how quickly public anger turned into a security problem for the capital and for other towns where Sudanese residents and traders live and work.
The underlying anger was tied to the war just across the border. Sudan’s conflict, which began in April 2023, had already become the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with roughly 25 million people in dire need of food and aid. The videos from Wad Madani intensified emotions in South Sudan because they appeared to show killings aimed at people because of their ethnicity. Rights groups confirmed that at least 13 people, including children, were killed there on ethnic grounds.
The evidence packet says hundreds of young men attacked Sudanese-owned businesses in Juba and elsewhere, with gunshots heard throughout the night as security forces patrolled. On Friday, shops and businesses in Juba, including the Konyo Konyo market, remained closed and bread prices rose sharply at bakeries that stayed open. That disruption turned the reprisal attacks into an economic story as well as a security one, because ordinary commerce was suddenly functioning under threat.
The BBC also reported attacks in Wau and demonstrations in Tonj, though it said those incidents could not be independently verified. That caution matters because the spread of rumours and outrage can easily outpace confirmed reporting in moments like this. Even so, the core pattern was plain: anger at killings in Sudan spilled across the border and into South Sudanese streets.
Kiir’s call for calm and the police curfew were attempts to halt that cycle before it deepened further. The evidence packet makes clear that the South Sudanese government viewed the retaliation as both dangerous and destabilising, especially with Sudanese civilians and traders now under protection. The central question is not whether people were angry — they clearly were — but whether the state can hold back a wave of retaliatory violence before it tears through more businesses, homes and streets.
For now, the facts are severe enough on their own. Three people died, seven were wounded, houses were burned and a capital city was put under curfew because events in a neighboring war reignited old resentments.
