South Sudan’s new First Vice President promises peace

One of the memos, bearing a purported logo of the national army, dated July 25, 2016 directs Gen. Aluenge to shoot down any “uncleared Aircraft on South Sudan Airspace” and also states “Don’t spare any aircraft bearing United Nations symbols on the suspected airspace”.

“This one is an extremely worrying one, given the limited capacities that there are”, he said.

South Sudan’s former vice president and prominent opposition leader Riek Machar has told Al Jazeera that his replacement by President Salva Kiir is “illegal”.

In the past three weeks alone, there have been more refugee arrivals in Uganda than in the entire first six months of 2016, which counted 33,838 refugees.

Radio Tamazuj cited Abraham Malek, head of the South Sudan Journalist’s Network, as saying that Christopher was arrested after his paper mistakenly reported that a peacekeeping force from neighboring countries would arrive this week in the South Sudanese capital. Another 555 were received in Kiryandongo Settlement.

“Michael Christopher and Alfred Taban should be immediately released from jail and allowed to continue their journalism in the interests of the people of South Sudan and the region, who need to be kept abreast of developments”.

While the intensity of the violence in South Sudan has subsided since early July, the security situation remains volatile.

“The new arrivals in Uganda are reporting ongoing fighting as well as looting by armed militias, burning down of homes and murders of civilians”, Edwards said.

The UNHCR added that over 90 percent of the refugees were woman and children as adult males were being forced to join armed groups.

The influx is putting serious strain on the capacity of collection points, and transit and reception centres, which are too small for the swelling number of arrivals.

“The move taken by the SPLM-IO is a legal move”.

The humanitarian response to the influx of South Sudanese refugees is sorely lacking due to severe underfunding.

Edwards says the UNHCR is straining to provide shelter and anything beyond basic life-saving assistance to the refugees.

Since the conflict in the African nation began in December 2013, some 1.69 million people have been internally displaced by protracted fighting. Some 1.69 million people are displaced inside the country, while 831,582 South Sudanese refugees are overseas, mainly in Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda.