The US special envoy to South Sudan has said the country's warring factions have agreed to attend peace talks in Ethiopia.
Donald Booth told reporters that the commitment of both sides is “a first but very important step to achieving a cessation of hostilities” and the beginning of negotiations to resolve the crisis in the world’s newest country.
South Sudan has been gripped by violence since December 15th when a fight among presidential guards later spiralled into ethnically-based violence across the country.
The violence quickly spread to half of the country’s 10 states, cleaving the nation along the ethnic faultline of rebel leader Riek Machar’s Nuer group and President Salva Kiir’s Dinka.
The unrest has killed more than a thousand people in the past two weeks and displaced close to 200,000, raising the spectre of civil war and unnerving oil markets.
Under a regional bloc known as IGAD, Ethiopia has been playing a leading role in trying to get Mr Kiir and his political rival Mr Machar to the negotiating table amid continuing hostilities between both sides.
South Sudanese forces battled rebels on the outskirts of the strategically key town of Bor today.
The scene of an ethnic massacre of Dinka in 1991 by Nuer fighters loyal to Mr Machar, Bor was briefly seized by the rebels early in the conflict before being retaken by government troops after several days of heavy fighting.
The “White Army” militia, which was involved in the massacre, had engaged the government soldiers outside the town yesterday.
Made up of Nuer youths who dust their bodies in white ash, the militia has in the past sided with Mr Machar.
A spokesman for the government of South Sudan’s Unity state, controlled by forces loyal to Mr Machar, previously denied he was in control of the White Army fighters, raising the prospect that the violence was spreading beyond the control of widely recognised ethnic leaders.
About 70,000 civilians have fled Bor and sought refuge in the town of Awerial in neighbouring Lakes state, with no access to food, clean water or shelter, medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said. Others were hiding in swamps. "Living conditions are verging on the catastrophic," MSF said.
Reuters