South Sudan rebel leader has fled country, spokesman says

The U.N. indicated that Machar had been in danger.

Mr. Machar reached the Democratic Republic of Congo on Wednesday, said Lambert Mende, Congo’s information minister. He wouldn’t say where they were Thursday, only that they had been handed over to Congolese authorities.

Asked whether Machar required medical care, Haq said “we have been providing him with whatever medical assistance he needs”.

“We hope that this is temporary, and we are working as hard as we can to raise the resources needed to restore the full level of food assistance for as many refugees as possible”, he added.

The secretary-general’s spokesman said Ban is “alarmed” by the allegations that South Sudanese forces raped and attacked foreign aid workers living in a residential complex as well as locals.

Machar had returned to South Sudan in April in a major step toward realizing a peace deal reached in August 2015 under intense global pressure.

The African Union must stop dragging its feet and take concrete steps to set up the court, including by immediately collecting and preserving evidence before it is lost and witnesses memories of events fade.

Kiir replaced his vice president Machar with Deng Gai after rivalry between the two men led to violence in the capital Juba early in July as forces from both sides battled each other with tanks, helicopters and other heavy weapons.

But fighting flared last month, leading Machar to withdraw with his forces from Juba around mid-July.

Civil war broke out in South Sudan in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused Machar, then his deputy, of plotting a coup.

The U.N. Security Council has responded by voting to send 4,000 regional peacekeepers into the South Sudanese capital, but the government of President Salva Kiir Mayardit has so far refused to accept the force – arguing that its deployment without his approval would violate the nation’s sovereignty.

The former vice president’s departure comes weeks after the collapse of an internationally brokered power-sharing deal aimed at calming the long-running feud between him and Mr. Kiir, a quarrel that has mired South Sudan in almost-constant conflict since it became an independent nation in 2011.

A spike in the forced recruitment of child soldiers in South Sudan could be imminent, the United Nations’ children’s agency said on Friday, amid fears that the world’s youngest nation is on the brink of renewed civil war.

The comments come after several government officials in Juba said the government would not have welcomed the return of the Sudanese army in any capacity in the country, equating it to invasion.