United Nations headquarters in NY has revealed that its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo airlifted the former First Vice President, Riek Machar, from the South Sudan-DRC border and transported him into the interior part of Congo on Wednesday.
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South Sudan’s rebel leader and former Vice-President Riek Machar has fled the country following a breakdown in its fragile peace agreement that has seen hundreds of civilians killed.
The UN peacekeeping mission in the DRC became aware of Machar’s presence in the country on Wednesday and contacted the Congolese government, who then asked the mission to extract Machar from his location, a UN spokesman said.
“At this precarious stage in South Sudan’s short history, UNICEF fears that a further spike in child recruitment could be imminent”, said Unicef Deputy executive director Justin Forsyth, following a trip to Bentiu and Juba in South Sudan.
Machar led a rebellion against his rival President Salva Kiir before a peace deal installed him as vice president past year.
But fighting flared for several days last month, leading Machar to withdraw with his forces from Juba around mid-July.
Riek Machar, whose whereabouts have been unknown since clashes in the country’s capital Juba in July, is reportedly in exile in another “safe country” in east Africa and will give a press conference shortly, aides said.
The civil war broke out in 2013 and was fought along ethnic lines after Kiir sacked Machar as his vice president for allegedly plotting against him.
The ethnically charged war has forced more than one in five of South Sudan’s 11 million people to flee their homes and around half of the country’s children do not attend school.
Last week, the United Nations voted to send 4,000 regional peacekeepers to Juba.
Also on Wednesday, the United Nations launched a probe of a hotel attack in South Sudan, in which soldiers raped women and assaulted aid workers, while United Nations peacekeepers allegedly failed to act. China also called on the government of South Sudan to open a comprehensive investigation into the matter and protect Chinese citizens in that country.
Both sides in South Sudan’s conflict have repeatedly promised to address allegations of child recruitment, but they continue such recruitment efforts.
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South Sudan’s new Vice President Taban Deng Gai will begin a two-day visit to Khartoum on Sunday for talks on thorny issues still outstanding from its 2011 secession, an official said.
