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South Sudan’s Machar in Khartoum for Treatment, Sudan says

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the fighting and over 2 million people were displaced.

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Osman said his government has notified South Sudan, adding, “The health condition of Dr. Rick Machar is now stable and he will stay in the country under full medical supervision until he leaves the country for a destination of his choice to complete his medical treatment”.

In the wake of fresh fighting in the South Sudanese capital Juba last month, Kenya offered to provide troops for a new force, approved by the Security Council on August 12, alongside Ethiopia and Rwanda.

South Sudan’s presidential spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, said Tuesday that the government was not aware that Machar was in Sudan and had no comment.

“Dr. Riek Machar’s health is stable now and he will remain in the country under comprehensive health care until he leaves to a destination of his choice to complete his treatment”, he added.

He did not specify when Machar arrived in Khartoum, but said that when he arrived he was in need of “immediate medical treatment”.

Machar’s spokesman in Nairobi, James Gatdet Dak, could not immediately confirm that he had traveled to Khartoum.

Aides of Marchar confirmed last week that he had left South Sudan and was in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo.

Machar fled South Sudan’s capital last month amid renewed fighting, just months after he returned to the country to resume being vice president under a peace deal signed past year under worldwide pressure.

Machar and Kiir have always been rivals, even before South Sudan’s independence in 2011, when they were both commanders in the SPLA force that fought Sudan’s Khartoum-based government. Sudan’s government and the SPLA finally signed a peace deal in 1995, which led to South Sudan’s independence in 2011.

His absence further weakened the peace deal, with Kiir quickly replacing Machar as vice president in a contested move.

South Sudan’s civil war began in December 2013 when government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, battled rebels led by his former deputy Riek Machar, a Nuer. But fighting flared last month and he was then sacked.

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Meanwhile, US Secretary of State John Kerry has called for the deployment of a 4,000-strong “protection force” to bolster the United Nations peacekeeping mission in South Sudan.

U.S. pushes for extra troop deployment to South Sudan