JUBA, Sept. 11 (Xinhua) -- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Monday it has suspended operations in South Sudan's Equatoria region following the killing of its staff last Friday while helping to deliver aid to victims of the armed conflict.
Mari Aftret Mortvert, a spokesperson for ICRC in South Sudan, said they have temporally halted operations in the Equatoria region to assess the security situation and also mourn their fallen colleague.
Mortvert added that ICRC is conducting investigations into the death of the driver before coming out with a decision about its operations in the area.
"For now our movements have stopped in the Equatoria region. We are just trying to understand and try to investigate what happened, but is too early to go into details of when, where and how we would go and move further into our activities," Mortvert told Xinhua by phone.
Lukudu Kennedy Laki Emmanuel, who joined ICRC as a truck driver in 2014, was killed after a convoy of nine trucks and a four-wheel-drive vehicle was shot at by unknown assailants.
The relief agency said the convoy was returning from an assistance operation in Western Equatoria.
According to UN, South Sudan has become a hostile environment for aid workers. Since the outbreak of civil war in the East African country in 2013, more than 80 aid workers have been killed, including 16 this year alone.
Under international humanitarian law, intentional attacks against humanitarian relief personnel may constitute war crimes.
South Sudan has been embroiled in more than three years of conflict that has taken a devastating toll on the people of South Sudan.
The peace pact signed in Addis Ababa in 2015 under intense international pressure was shattered again following renewed violence between rival government and opposition troops in the capital Juba in July 2016.
The conflict has since spread to other regions which enjoyed relative peace, causing mass displacement of at least 4 million people internally and externally.
