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Thousands of civilians have fled an opposition stronghold in eastern South Sudan after the army ordered evacuations to clear the way for a military offensive, the latest sign that the country\u2019s fragile peace is unravelling, as fears of a return to all-out civil war haunt the world\u2019s youngest nation.<\/p>\n
The town of Akobo, near the Ethiopian border, was almost completely emptied by Sunday after the South Sudan People\u2019s Defense Forces issued an ultimatum on Friday demanding that civilians, aid workers and United Nations peacekeepers leave ahead of a planned assault.<\/p>\n list of 2 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cThe town is now almost empty,\u201d said Nhial Lew, a local humanitarian official. \u201cWomen, children and the elderly have left and crossed into Ethiopia.\u201d By Sunday evening, he could hear the conflict closing in. \u201cWe are hearing the sound of machine guns approaching,\u201d he told the Associated Press news agency.<\/p>\n The army\u2019s deadline was set to expire Monday afternoon.<\/p>\n The order extends a government counteroffensive, launched in January and dubbed Operation Enduring Peace, that has already displaced more than 280,000 people across Jonglei state since December, when opposition forces began seizing government positions.<\/p>\n The UN\u2019s Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan warned of a possible \u201creturn to full-scale war\u201d if the country\u2019s leadership didn\u2019t take the challenges it faces more seriously.<\/p>\n \u201cPreventing further mass atrocity crimes, institutional collapse, and the destruction of South Sudan\u2019s fragile transition requires urgent coordinated national, regional and international re-engagement,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n Akobo, which had been considered a relatively safe haven and sheltered more than 82,000 displaced people, is one of the last remaining strongholds of the Sudan People\u2019s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition, or SPLM-IO, the armed movement loyal to South Sudan\u2019s detained former vice president, Riek Machar.<\/p>\n Two UN flights evacuated most humanitarian staff on Sunday, though the International Committee of the Red Cross had not yet pulled its personnel from a surgical unit it runs at the local hospital, where wounded patients were still being treated.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are worried for our patients,\u201d said Dual Diew, the county health director. \u201cWe tried to make a plan to take them to a safer location, but we don\u2019t have enough fuel.\u201d<\/p>\n The offensive comes amid a wider breakdown of the 2018 peace agreement that ended a civil war between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing Machar, a conflict that killed an estimated 400,000 people and forced millions from their homes.<\/p>\n Machar has been under house arrest in the capital, Juba, since March 2025, facing charges of treason and murder that his supporters say are politically motivated.<\/p>\n His detention coincided with a sharp rise in armed opposition activity, and a UN inquiry has since found that South Sudan\u2019s leaders have been \u201csystematically dismantling\u201d the accord.<\/p>\n Conflicts have taken place across the country among groups associated with the two factions, said Jan Pospisil, a South Sudan researcher who spoke to Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n On Sunday, at least 169 people were killed, among them 90 civilians, including women and children, when armed men stormed a village in Abiemnom county in the country\u2019s north.<\/p>\n The local administrator blamed the attack on elements of the White Army, a militia historically allied to Machar, alongside SPLM-IO-affiliated forces. The group denied any involvement. More than 1,000 people sought shelter at a UN base in the area.<\/p>\n \u201cSuch violence places civilians at grave risk and must stop immediately,\u201d said Anita Kiki Gbeho of the UN mission in South Sudan.<\/p>\n Aid organisations operating in the conflict zone have also been targeted, with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials, MSF, saying on Monday that 26 of its staff remain unaccounted for, a month after a government air strike destroyed its hospital in the town of Lankien and a separate facility in Pieri was looted.<\/p>\n Staff who had been reached described \u201cdestruction, violence and extreme hardships\u201d. It was the 10th attack on an MSF facility in 12 months.<\/p>\n \u201cMedical workers must never be targets,\u201d said Yashovardhan, the charity\u2019s head of mission in South Sudan, who uses only one name.<\/p>\n Pospisil said the crisis had exposed the fragility of Kiir\u2019s hold on power.<\/p>\n \u201cThe state is literally falling apart,\u201d Pospisil said, referring to the convergence of conflict in the country and the elderly state of the president, whose condition has raised questions.<\/p>\n Pospisil added that the outcome of Machar\u2019s ongoing trial would likely shape what comes next.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Thousands of civilians have fled an opposition stronghold in eastern South Sudan after the army ordered evacuations to clear the way for a military offensive, the latest sign that the country\u2019s fragile peace is unravelling, as fears of a return to all-out civil war haunt the world\u2019s youngest nation. The town of Akobo, near the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14370,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14369\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Dozens killed in the north<\/h2>\n
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