A mass grave has been discovered by United Nations investigators in a rebel-held city in South Sudan, the U.N. said Tuesday. This was announced as a possible opening for negotiation occurred to avert civil war in the world’s newest country where ethnic violence has erupted.
The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to beef up its peacekeeping force in South Sudan while condemning targeted violence against civilians and ethnic communities and called for “an immediate cessation of hostilities and the immediate opening of a dialogue.”
The South Sudan government announced that its military forces had taken back another key city, Bor, from the rebels who controlled it for the last week. The bodies were found in the town of Bentiu in oil-rick Unity state. One grave was found with 14 bodies and another site nearby with 20 bodies, said U.N. human rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani. The government minister of information, Michael Makuei Lueth, said Bentiu is under the control of rebels loyal to the country’s former vice president, Riek Machar, indicating they were responsible for the killings. The dead in Bentiu reportedly were ethnic Dinka who belonged to the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, said Shamdasani, referring to government military forces. South Sudan President Salva Kiir is Dinka, the country’s largest ethnic group, while Machar is Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry spoke on the phone Tuesday with Machar, who said he told Kerry he is ready for talks with Kiir which is likely to take place in Ethiopia. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, reiterating his call for Kiir and opposition leaders to end the crises said, “Whatever the differences, nothing can justify the violence that has engulfed their young nation.”
Violence began spreading across South Sudan after a fight among Kiir’s presidential guards late December 15. Some 20,000 people seeking safety have crowded round the U.N. base in Juba, the capital, where at least two other mass graves are reported to have been found, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay said. The U.N. humanitarian office said 45,000 people have taken refuge in and around U.N. bases in the country and 81,000 people have fled their homes as a result of the fighting. The Security Council voted to temporarily increase the number of U.N. military personnel in South Sudan from 7,000 to 12,500 and the U.N.’s international police contingent from 900 to 1,323. To reach the new levels, the U.N. authorized temporary transfers of troops, police and equipment from their missions in Congo, Darfur, Abyei, Ivory Coast and Liberia. After the vote, Ban cautioned that strengthening the U.N. mission “will not happen overnight” – and even with additional manpower and equipment “we will not be able to protect every civilian in need in South Sudan. “The parties are responsible to end the conflict,” Ban stressed.
South Sudan’s U.N. Ambassador Francis Deng assured the council after the vote that the government “is doing as much as it can, under very difficult circumstances, to restore calm and stability to the affected areas in the country.” He continued, “South Sudanese do not want to fall back into the abyss of war from which they have suffered for over half a century.” Meanwhile, South Sudanese troops were advancing on Bor on Tuesday according to military spokesman Col. Philip Aguer. The government said on Twitter later that it was clearing out remaining rebel forces.
The country’s top U.N. humanitarian official, Toby Lanzer said Monday that he believes the death toll from 10 days of violence has surpassed 1,000 but added that there are no firm counts. Hilde F. Johnson, head of the U.N. Mission in South Sudan called the scale of the crisis “unprecedented” for the mission and urged more resources to help people in U.N. camps across the country. She also called on all those in South Sudan to refrain from “any community motivated violence.”
South Sudan is the world’s newest country which peacefully broke away from Sudan in 2011 following a 2005 peace deal. Before that, the south fought decades of war with Sudan. The country which is one of the world’s least developed still has pockets of rebel resistance and sees cyclical, tribal clashes that result in hundreds of deaths.
In the meantime, as a precautionary measure, the U.S. military has deployed a platoon of Marines and an aircraft had been moved from Camp Lemmonnier in Djibouti to the Entebbe airfield in Uganda in order to respond more quickly if they are asked to evacuate any Americans remaining in South Sudan. There are an estimated 100 Americans in South Sudan should a complete evacuation become necessary.
To read more on the U.S. Marine deployment, click here: https://fggam.org/united-states-marines-on-the-move-again-this-time-to-south-sudan-africa/
