This latest round of fighting erupted on Thursday 7 July in Juba’s Gudele neighbourhood, pitting Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and SPLA-In Opposition (IO) forces loyal to Vice-President Riek Machar.
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The UN called for an immediate arms embargo, as well as attack helicopters to strengthen its 13,000-strong peacekeeping force.
South Sudan’s civil war exposed deep ethnic fault lines in the country, pitting the Dinka supporters of Kiir against the Nuer followers of Machar.
In a series of tweets, external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj on Monday said, “South Sudan – I am aware of the developments in South Sudan”.
Black smoke rises above Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on Sunday.
Numerous thousands displaced by the renewed fighting in Juba are sheltering at the two U.N. bases, a World Food Program compound and other areas, said U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs spokeswoman Matilda Moyo.
South Sudan’s capital is witnessing heavy fighting due to clashes between former rebels and government soldiers in several parts of the city.
A precarious calm was restored on Saturday- the day South Sudan marked its fifth independence day – that was shattered Sunday by the fighting.
Media captionWhat’s happening in South Sudan?
Kiir and Machar have always been rivals in politics and on the battlefield.
United Nations officials are very concerned the fighting could spread across the country. We have constituted a task force to constantly study the emerging situation in South Sudan and to closely tab on the occurrences there.
Much of the fighting in Juba centered in the Jebel area where there is an opposition camp and another United Nations base where about 28,000 displaced civilians have been living since 2013. “It’s an ordered departure”, Kirby said, hinting at hopes that the outbreak in violence would not explode into a full-blown civil war. Many more have moved to the UN-run refugee camps.
Since then, hundreds of people are believed to have been killed and thousands displaced by the renewed violence.
Lueth said President Kiir would issue a permanent and unilateral ceasefire before Sunday’s end and urged his rival, Vice President Machar, to do the same “because we want to save the lives of the people of South Sudan”. “They are not stopping it”.
Also today, two Chinese UN peacekeepers were killed when their convoy was hit by a tank shell.
A government tank fired on a Chinese armored personnel carrier Sunday, a witness in the United Nations base told The Associated Press. “I’m appalled by these indiscriminate attacks on civilians and peacekeepers”.
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The civil war, which broke out in December 2013 after Kiir sacked Machar, killed thousands of people, drove more than 2.5 million people from their homes and left nearly half the nation of 11 million struggling to find enough food. A civil war that began in December 2013 came a few months after Kiir dismissed Machar as his deputy.
