Mr. Machar reached the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, said Lambert Mende, Congo’s information minister.
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Fighting between rival militias has recently flared up again as groups loyal to South Sudan President and former rebel leader Salva Kiir clash with supporters of former vice president Riek Machar and the opposition SPLA-IO party.
The UN spokesperson, Farah Haq, said in a daily briefing to journalists in NY on Thursday that Machar was located in the border of South Sudan and DR Congo by the United Nations Organization Mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo (MONUSCO).
This AFP file photo taken on February 10, 2015 shows child soldiers sit with their rifles at a ceremony for their disarmament in South Sudan overseen by UNICEF.
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.
Hundreds of civilians died in the July fighting.
Haq did not refer to an official asylum application by Machar at this time.
Riek Machar has gone to a safe country in the neighboring East African region, Mabior Garang, a spokesman for the SPLM-IO party, said in a posting on Facebook.
Last week, the UN Security Council approved the deployment of an additional 4,000-strong peacekeeping force in South Sudan, after the July infighting threatened to send the country back to all-out civil war. South Sudan has not yet accepted the force, saying that deploying it without government approval would be a violation of the country’s sovereignty.
The United Nations’ children’s agency UNICEF said more than 16,000 children have been recruited into armed groups since December 2013 when the civil war first erupted. According to reports from victims, they then went on a almost four-hour rampage through a residential compound popular with foreigners, while the United Nations peacekeeping force stationed nearby are accused of refusing to respond to desperate calls for help.
Pre-publication censorship is rare in South Sudan but print runs of newspapers are sometimes seized and a regime of self-censorship is enforced by summoning or arresting journalists deemed to have crossed any red lines.
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“The systematic use of rape, sexual exploitation and abduction as a weapon of war in South Sudan must cease, together with the impunity for all perpetrators”, Forsyth said.
