The civil war, which broke out in December 2013 after Kiir sacked Machar as vice-president, 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.
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Commercial flights to Juba remain cancelled though charter flights are evacuating hundreds of aid workers and other foreign citizens from the capital.
“We are on the lookout because anything can happen”, said one resident who did not want to be named. “There are a lot of soldiers and policemen in the streets patrolling”.
The death toll from Saturday and Sunday’s battles is not yet known but around 300 were killed in just a few hours on Friday.
Russia said in January it was against an arms embargo, but on Tuesday Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said that he was “not completely opposed” to the measure, though he was wary of whether it would actually achieve anything. Owusu called this “unacceptable”.
Access to the United Nations compound is being blocked for civilians, who are trapped in churches and schools without access to water and sanitation, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said, adding that it was sending trauma kits. A day later, as Kiir and Machar met at the presidential compound about the incident, heavy gunfire erupted outside and spread to other parts of the capital.
August 2015 – President Kiir signs a peace deal with rebels after a threat of sanctions from the UN. That war exposed deep ethnic fault lines, pitting the Dinka supporters of Kiir against the Nuer followers of Machar. In April, Machar returned to the capital to again take up the post of vice president, saying that “peace is the only choice for us to relieve our people the undeserved suffering associated with armed conflict enforced upon them”. Juba is calm after Kiir declared a unilateral ceasefire onvMonday, following several days of fighting.
Speaking in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa, a Machar spokesman, Goi Jooyul Yol, described the situation as “fragile” and accused Kiir’s forces of surrounding Machar’s.
“This is a provocation”, he said. Thousands more have sought shelter in recent days. “This latest conflict is going to push even more people into hunger and despair”, she warned.
While the United Nations said the cease-fire in Juba appeared to be holding, it was “hugely worrying” that the fighting appeared to have spread outside the capital, the United Nations human rights office in Geneva said Tuesday.
“Most of the displaced were women and children”.
The U.N. refugee agency has expressed concern about the South Sudan-Uganda crossing, “where security is tightened on the South Sudan side”, and it called on all armed parties to allow safe passage.
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Relief workers should be given freedom of movement, said the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, Eugene Owusu.
