A soldier serving in the Presidential Guard in South Sudan’s national capital has been arrested on suspicion of committing robbery in the Rock City area, according to a security official.

Major Deng Malek, commander of the joint operation unit that patrols in the Rock City neighborhood, says one of the suspects arrested in connection with recent robberies in the area is a soldier in the Tiger Unit, the presidential guards.

“Actually there are soldiers involved. I cannot deny that soldiers are involved because one of the criminals we arrested was our soldier from the Tiger Unit,” he told UN Radio Miraya. 

The Citizen newspaper had reported earlier that “armed men dressed in military fatigues on Friday night descended on residences of Rock City, a suburb of Juba City terrorizing the people and demanding 500 SSP from each house hold.”

A resident of the area was quoted as saying that the gunmen were driving a Land Cruiser pick-up truck “resembling that one of the joint operation.”

Miraya FM likewise reported that seven armed men attacked and looted up to seven households in Juba’s Rock City neighborhood over the weekend.

Only one of the aggressors was not in uniform, according to a Rock City resident.

“They entered the verandah where we were watching movies and then they started telling us to get out from the house. Everybody should get out and sit down… Then they started entering the rooms from room to room and then they got everything.”

The resident explained, “They looted us. They took the amounts we have at home; they took one phone of our brother here in Rock City.”

“We heard there were some Ugandans and Kenyans who were beaten because they didn’t have 500 South Sudanese Pounds. They were asking each one 500 South Sudanese Pounds.”

For breaking news updates from Radio Tamazuj ‘like’ our page on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, or subscribe to our RSS feed.