Both South Sudan’s president Salva Kiir and rebel leader-turned-vice president Riek Machar have called for a unilateral cease-fire Monday in the capital Juba after several days of fierce battles between their respective forces.
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UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the Security Council on Monday to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan, sanction leaders and commanders who are blocking the implementation of a peace deal, and fortify the UN peacekeeping mission.
A ceasefire appears to be holding in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, after four days of heavy fighting between rival forces left more than 270 people dead.
The renewed fighting erupted on Thursday night, and again on Friday outside the presidential compound as Machar and Kiir were meeting.
Civil war broke out when soldiers from Kiir’s Dinka ethnic group disarmed and targeted troops of Machar’s Nuer ethnic group.
The mission was criticised in February after a camp housing some 50,000 displaced people in the northeastern oil hub of Malakal was attacked by men in uniform in which at least 25 civilians were killed and 120 were injured.
But tensions emerged between the country’s top leaders, President Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar, and supporters of each. Government forces have reportedly been ordered back to their barracks.
On Monday, Swaraj tweeted that the Indian government is making plans to evacuate Indian nationals stranded in Juba, while advising them not to panic and register themselves with the Indian embassy. The U.S. Embassy, Doctors Without Borders and the International Medical Corps are among organizations pulling out their staffs from South Sudan. Private chartered planes flew foreigners out of Juba’s reopened airport Tuesday, as regional carriers including Kenya Airways had cancelled flights there.
However, Uganda’s military said it it meant to evacuate its nationals trapped in the conflict.
The BBC’s James Copnall says the latest clashes have traumatised Juba and shredded a peace deal between Mr Kiir and Mr Machar, agreed last August.
Also today, two Chinese UN peacekeepers were killed when their convoy was hit by a tank shell.
The clashes are the first between the army and ex-rebels in Juba since Machar returned to take up the post of vice president in a unity government in April.
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“It rings through the whole city every time they fire”, said an aid worker, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. Tanker trucks have been unable to bring water to the tens of thousands of people in the base. Last month, the medical aid group Doctors Without Borders reported that peacekeepers were slow to intervene in an attack in February on a United Nations camp for thousands of displaced people in Malakal and that at least 25 people were killed.
