Month: December 2013

The United Nations voted Tuesday to send thousands more peacekeepers to South Sudan as the organization said it had found evidence of mass killings along ethnic lines in the country. The U.N. Security Council voted to nearly double its international troops in the country to about 13,800, including 12,500 military and 1,323 international police. Before the council voted, Navi Pillay, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said the organization had found at least one mass grave in South Sudan as well as evidence of ethnically targeted killings and arbitrary detentions. On Tuesday, the U.S. military’s Africa Command moved a KC-130 transport plane and around 50 troops from Camp Lemonnier, Djibouti, to Entebbe, Uganda, the Pentagon said. The move will allow the Pentagon to send more military personnel to South Sudan more quickly if they are needed to help protect U.S. personnel and facilities in the country, defense officials […]

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South Sudan’s embattled government claimed a victory on Tuesday when President Salva Kiir said his splintered army had retaken a state capital that last week fell to rebels, in fighting that injured two UN peacekeepers and reportedly drew Ugandan air support. In a sign that the conflict in the world’s newest country was escalating, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to authorise some 6,000 additional peacekeepers and police officers to reinforce its presence and protect UN compounds. The move will almost double the existing UN force on the ground. Humanitarians have reported mass graves, ethnic killings and war crimes since Mr Kiir, a member of the Dinka ethnic group, accused his sacked vice-president and long-time adversary Riek Machar, a Nuer, of plotting a coup against him. While Mr Machar denies attempting a coup he has since become the de facto head of a loose and fractured rebellion that has […]

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The security forces went house to house, rounding up civilians by the dozens and binding the wrists of some with wire, survivors said. Some were summarily shot in the street, they said, while others were hauled off to crowded cells. Bodies of the executed were tossed into shallow graves, one recalled. Another jail where civilians had been taken reeked of death, a witness said. “We thought that the war was fought between the soldiers,” said Peter Nhial, 30, one of many in a crowd of desperate people to describe attacks on civilians. Little more than a week after political tensions between South Sudan’s leaders erupted into clashes in the streets of the capital, the crisis has broadened into a societal conflict in which longstanding ethnic divisions are fueling the violence and civilians are often the targets, not accidental victims, of the fighting. On Tuesday, the […]

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There appeared to be no sign of a rapprochement between the central players in the crisis : President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, and former vice president Riek Machar, who is a Nuer, as the ethnic killings threaten to overwhelm U.N., U.S. and African efforts to end the violence. In telephone calls Tuesday to Kiir and Machar, Secretary of State John F. Kerry urged them “to accept a cessation of hostilities and begin mediated talks,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said. The United States has been the primary international backer of South Sudan since its 2011 independence from Sudan. The U.S. Africa Command moved about 50 Marines to neighboring Uganda, better positioning them to take action to protect U.S. facilities and personnel, if needed. The Marines were part of a 150-strong contingent deployed Monday from their base in Spain, along with transport and refueling aircraft, to Djibouti, on the […]

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