If the exact location of Machar DRC remained unclear Thursday, a UN spokesman in New York, Farhan Haq, said that Mr Machar had been supported by the UN Mission in DRC ( MONUSCO) before being handed over to the Congolese authorities. He said Machar had sustained a minor leg injury following several weeks of trekking in the wilderness.
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An earlier statement from Machar’s SPLM-IO party said the leader had been “evacuated to a safe country within the region” without naming Congo.
After clashes with President Salva Kiir’s army in the capital of Juba on July 8th, Machar and rebel forces left the city, putting the country’s peace deal in limbo.
But fighting flared last month, leading Machar to withdraw with his forces from Juba around mid-July.
South Sudan’s oil production has virtually ground to a halt since a civil war erupted there in December 2013, when President Salva Kiir accused Machar of plotting a coup.
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But South Sudan’s government said it opposed the deployment and it is not clear how the mission can go ahead without its co-operation.
He added that opposition groups were also in accordance with decision taken by the UN Security Council to strengthen their peacekeeping force in the country.
Peter Biar Ajak, a co-director for South Sudan at the International Growth Center, said Machar had no choice but to flee before his forces were decimated.
The UN children´s agency, UNICEF, warned Friday of a “spike” in the recruitment of child soldiers to fight in South Sudan´s civil war.
Supporters of Machar cried foul when Kiir accepted the nomination last month of a new vice president to replace Machar in the transitional government.
FILE – In this Sunday Dec. 29 2013 file photo, displaced South Sudanese children gather around a water truck to fill containers, at a United Nations compound which has become home to thousands of people displaced by the recent fighting, in the capital Juba, South Sudan.
The UN chief “urges, once more, the government of South Sudan to investigate these human right violations and to prosecute those involved in these unspeakable acts of violence”, his spokesman said.
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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.
