What was once Bentiu, the gateway to South Sudan’s oil fields, is now a cluster of bullet-riddled buildings and piles of scrap metal, its ghostly avenues abandoned. Residents of the town have long since decamped to a well-ordered grid of mud dwellings ringed by sewage, where they live in wretched limbo after three years of … Read more
About 400 British soldiers will join the UN peacekeeping force in South Sudan in the next weeks in one of Britain’s largest operational deployments worldwide, the force said Tuesday. A statement said the first of the British troops, “proudly wearing their distinctive blue UN berets, arrives in Juba today to join the United Nations Mission … Read more
Swift, well-coordinated actions by different components of UNMISS saw two separate outbreaks of fire in the Bentiu protection of civilians site being taken care of without any resulting deaths or injuries. The fires, occurring over the weekend, destroyed a total of 117 shelters. “The coordination between different components of UNMISS was really commendable and that … Read more
Hundreds of uprooted South Sudanese students missed taking school-leaving exams this week after refusing a government order to leave the safety of a UN base to sit the tests. Officials said nearly 900 students declined to leave the so-called “Protection of Civilians” (PoC) site inside a fortified UN base in the capital Juba to take … Read more
On the eve of the fifth anniversary of South Sudan’s independence on 9 July, sporadic gunfire rent the air in Juba, the capital city. What many assumed was a celebration of the world’s newest nation’s fifth anniversary turned out to be a precursor to a deadly clash pitting troops loyal to President Salva Kiir against … Read more
A United Nations cargo helicopter crashed Tuesday in the north part of South Sudan, killing three crew members and injuring another, a UN spokesman told reporters here. “The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has confirmed that three crew members of a helicopter contracted by the United Nations died today when it crashed near … Read more