Heavy fighting erupted again in South Sudan’s capital on Monday a day after the UN Security Council told rivals president Salva Kiir and vice-president Riek Machar to rein in their forces and end days of violence that have left scores dead.
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The State Department said the security situation in Juba on Sunday had seen a “sudden and serious deterioration”, with clashes between government and opposition forces breaking out into “general fighting”.
The fighting began in the morning and continued until about 8 p.m.in Juba, the capital, when a thunderstorm seemed to put a damper on the violence, said United Nations mission spokesman Shantal Persaud.
President Salva Kiir and former rebel leader Riek Machar, who is now vice president, signed a peace accord previous year and formed an uneasy transitional coalition government.
Zuma had expressed great concern over the “shooting incidences that took place in the past few days” in South Sudan, resulting in the deaths of over 100 people and leaving many wounded, the global relations and co-operation department said in a statement.
The opposition also has a base near Jebel and their leader also has his home there.
President Jacob Zuma joined other leaders in Africa and elsewhere in calling for an end to the renewed fighting in South Sudan. Fighting in the conflict has mostly followed ethnic lines.
The prolonged fighting in the capital raises the specter of South Sudan returning to civil war.
United Nations peacekeepers have not protected civilians at the Jebel camp or fired at the troops shelling the base, said the source in the base, who accused the soldiers with United Nations blue helmets of abandoning their positions.
Japan’s ambassador to the U.N., Koro Bessho confirmed the death of a Chinese soldier, while China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported the death of a second Chinese peacekeeper.
Up to 15,000 people could be displaced, according to World Food Programme (WFP) spokeswoman Challiss McDonough in Nairobi.
“I am deeply frustrated that despite commitments by South Sudan’s leaders, fighting has resumed”, Ban said in a statement. The war was fought broadly between South Sudan’s biggest ethnic groups – the Dinka, led by Mr Kiir, and the Nuer, under Mr Machar.
The latest violence came hours after the UN Security Council called on the warring factions to immediately stop the fighting. Many of the UNMISS staff members are Indian nationals. People have become desperate. Relations between the two men have been fractious since the world’s youngest country gained its independence in 2011. Soldiers targeted Nuer civilians in the ensuing fighting, Human Rights Watch says. At least 239 soldiers and 33 civilians have been killed, according to estimates by medical sources.
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“Between the collapse of oil prices and the destruction they themselves wrought in the civil war, South Sudan is so destitute that there are no resources with which the country’s rulers might employ to bring their followers to heel”, Pham said.
