JUBA: An attack on a camp of cattle herders killed 41 people in South Sudan late last week, a local official said on Monday, as the UN warned of rising violence in the area.

Clashes involving pastoralists and settled farming communities are common in the south of the world’s youngest country. The attack occurred in the Nyolo village in the southern Eastern Equatoria state early in the morning on Friday, Angok Gordon Kuol, the head of the Bor community, said in a statement. Forty-one people including women and children were killed, while 65 were wounded and others remained missing, the statement said. “It was a cold-blooded massacre targeting unarmed civilians,” it added.