Women and children stand under a tree where children are weighed and care is organised, if needed, in a clinic run by Doctors Without Borders in Minkammen, 25km south of Bor, yesterday.
JUBA: South Sudan’s army said it regained a rebel-held northern town yesterday, giving the government control of a region where oil production had been halted by fighting that has left the world’s youngest nation close to civil war.
Forces loyal to President Salva Kiir recaptured Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, in early afternoon, army spokesman Philip Aguer said. “When you control Bentiu you control all oilfields in Unity.”
More than three weeks of fighting between forces and rebels loyal to former vice-president Riek Machar have killed more than 1,000 people, driven 230,000 from their homes and forced a cut in oil production.
Rebels made a “tactical withdrawal to avoid civilian casualties” in Bentiu, according to Lul Ruai Koang, a military spokesman for the rebel delegation attending stuttering peace talks in Ethiopia.
He said rebels continued to hold the surrounding countryside. He said the government forces had been backed by fighters from the Justice and Equality Movement, a rebel group from Sudan’s Darfur province.
South Sudan’s rebels accused neighbouring Uganda of aiding Kiir by launching air strikes against their positions, something Kampala denies. Ugandan troops patrol Juba’s airport and guard the presidential palace, at Kiir’s request.
South Sudan’s oil production fell by 45,000 barrels per day to 200,000 bpd after oilfields in Unity were shut down due to fighting. The Upper Nile state is still pumping about 200,000 bpd, the government says.
Separately, sources said the US was weighing targeted sanctions against South Sudan due to its leaders’ failure to end the crisis. Such sanctions focus on individuals, entities or sectors in a country. “It is a tool that has been discussed,” one source said.
The possibility of sanctions against a country the US helped create in 2011 shows how frustrated President Barack Obama’s administration has become with Kiir and Machar’s rebel faction.
Washington on Thursday cranked up the pressure for a deal, saying South Sudan risked losing hundreds of millions of dollars in US aid if the two sides did not end violence. The fighting, often along ethnic lines, is the worst in South Sudan since it won independence from Sudan in 2011. The unrest threatens to destabilise fragile east Africa.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged Kiir to release political detainees and called for “the two sides to negotiate in earnest.”
The UN mission in South Sudan accused rebels and government forces of obstructing aid.
Rebels had looted warehouses, commandeered aid agency vehicles and ransacked property in Bentiu and the town of Bor, the UN Mission in South Sudan said.
Government authorities hampered UN flights carrying supplies for peacekeepers and clinics and stopped some peacekeeper patrols, it said.Reuters
