A hand grenade explosion kills two, injured 34 in Northern Bahr El Ghazal. Police said the incident happen on Saturday at around 5 am during the night party organized by youth to celebrate their football’s trophy win at Kuecrac village which is part of Mariam, Udhom Payam in Aweil West County.
Captain Guot Guot Akol is the police spokesperson in Aweil. He said many of those injured are children age 11- 15, two children died on spot. The 19 other are adults including two police officers.
Akol said the suspect is believed to be one of wounded soldier and is known by the local people and earlier had an argument with police officers deployed at the venue to maintain security at the party.
He said the suspect was first restrained and put into custody by the police because he was drunk and causing chaos but the part’s organizers come in and convince the police to have released him and was escorted home.
“Then again he decided to come back with two grenades and detonated one close to the music system, police saw him, by the time he warned people to lay down at that moment it exploded and the fragments hurt many people, two children died instantly”.
Akol said he is still in possession of the second grenade which still posed threat but forces are on the hunt and they monitoring his movement.
He said they will apprehend him so that he will answered the reason why he did what he did at the party. “thou he is still at large and he will soon be apprehended” said Akol.
Salah Makoi a local artists and one of the people injured now in Aweil hospital said the explosion happened during his time at around 5 am when he was call to go on stage as he was preparing to take the mic, the thing exploded. “I fell down, when I tried to get up, I found it spoiled my shoe and was bleeding, I removed my t-shirt and tied to the wound to stop the bleeding”.
Makoi said during the night there as another incident where police try to take the gun from the soldier by force but he fired two warning shot and told them he will fire at them should they attempt again.
He said some the victims are in Aweil civil hospital and have serious injuries that are critical and in need of blood but said his injures are not live threatening.