A spokesman for South Sudan’s opposition and rebel group says that their leader Riek Machar has fled the country.
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A spokesman for the United Nations added a layer of intrigue Thursday, asserting that the organization’s peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo, known by its acronym MONUSCO, had assisted Machar, his wife and 10 others in safe travel once they had crossed into the country from South Sudan, which happened Wednesday.
“At that point the UN Mission contacted the authorities in the DRC who in turn requested MONUSCO [UN’s mission in the DRC] to facilitate his extraction and his transfer to the care of the DRC”.
A spokesman for the DRC’s government, Lambert Mende, denied it had been in touch with anyone about helping the former South Sudanese vice president.
Earlier on Thursday, a Machar aide told the AFP news agency that the former vice president was in the DRC capital, Kinshasa, and wanted “to go as soon as possible to Ethiopia”.
The heavy fighting between troops loyal to the country’s president Salva Kiir and those loyal to Machar prompted more than 70,000 people to flee across the border to Uganda alone.
Machar left Juba after renewed clashes between his forces and those of President Salva Kiir claimed over 300 lives and led to the fighters loyal to the former rebel leader fleeing the city.
Nineteen soldiers have been arrested “because of crimes committed in July” and now face military trial, army spokesman Lul Rai Koang said Wednesday.
South Sudan’ s rebel leader Riek MacharA Machar representative who did not want to be identified told dpa he was in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
After Mr. Kiir accused Mr. Machar, his then-deputy, of plotting a coup in 2013, a civil war broke out that left an estimated 50,000 people dead.
South Sudan’s President Kiir told Al Jazeera on Sunday that it had not yet closed the door on a United Nations protection force. In April, Mr. Machar, accompanied by some 1,000 troops, returned to the capital Juba to resume his post as vice president, following last August’s signing of the power-sharing accord.
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Supporters of Machar cried foul when Kiir accepted the nomination last month of a new vice president to replace Machar in the transitional government.
