LATEST: Heavy fighting erupts again in Juba, South Sudan’s capital, Machar’s base under attack Jul. 10 Featured <http://www.southsudannation.com/category/featured/>, Uncategorized <http://www.southsudannation.com/category/uncategorized/> 1 comment <http://www.southsudannation.com/heavy-fighting-erupts-again-in-juba-south-sudans-capital-machars-base-under-attack/#comments>
Sunday, JUL/10/2016, SSN; Forces loyal to the vice-president of South Sudan say their positions in the capital, Juba, have been attacked by government troops, reports the BBC. UN representatives reported heavy exchanges of gunfire near their headquarters in the suburb of Jebel. The clashes follow days of fighting between supporters of President Salva Kiir and Vice-President Riek Machar. The violence has raised fears of renewed instability, with a 2015 peace deal failing to quell unrest. Heavy gunfire was reported on Sunday in the Gudele and Jebel suburbs of Juba, near a military barracks occupied by troops loyal to Mr Machar. “For about 30 to 40 minutes we heard sounds of heavy artillery in the direction of Jebel area,” an aid worker based in Juba told Reuters. >From Al Jazeera: Latest— Intense fighting has resumed in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, as an increasingly tense security situation threatened to send the young country back to all-out civil war. Al Jazeera staff in the city on Sunday heard loud booms, characteristic of heavy weapons, and gunfire coming from the area near the airport, which local sources said had closed. In a post on Twitter, Kenya Airways said they had suspended flights to Juba “due to [the] uncertain security situation”. Gunfire had earlier been heard in the capital’s south-west near an army barracks and a United Nations base. Violence from Thursday to Saturday killed more than 100 people, mostly soldiers from different armed factions, after gun battles broke out across Juba. Our correspondent said the latest bout of violence meant “that the hopes of peace were dimming” in the country, which reached its fifth independence anniversary on Saturday. “These are not good times,” Hendren said on Sunday. “Two days ago, the presidential palace was struck – that is a major strike into the heart of government here and shows just how shaky it is. “And on Saturday, the fifth Independence Day was completely silent because Juba was shut down – it was militarily occupied, which is exactly the opposite of what is supposed to happen here under a peace accord in August.” ANALYSIS FROM JOHN HENDREN IN JUBA I don’t think anyone here is talking about advancing peace right now. The president and the vice president have both said they are committed to doing so, and they of course are the rival factions that came together to form this coalition government – but their armies remain separate, they are clashing and have done so over the past week and sporadically before that. So this obviously dims hopes for peace anywhere in the near future. The concern is now that if the fighting continues you might have a humanitarian crisis because you will have people trapped in a country where people already are having great difficulty subsisting because of inflation, poverty and other problems here. So it could be a crisis in the very near future if this fighting does not stop, and that is probably the more immediate concern than the overall peace agreement moving forward – although both the president and the vice president have said they are committed to doing that. More to follow……………. -- To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/d/forum/southsudankob View this message at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/southsudankob/topic-id/message-id For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "South Sudan Info - The Kob" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/SouthSudanKob. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/SouthSudanKob/CAJb14op1bAhGvzDrjwqHuMMKijijFJvcU6Jn-c6RD7vgsEi9Eg%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
