{UAH} UPDF retakes Machar's hometown: Rebels

LEER: South Sudan government forces have recaptured Leer, the hometown of nominal rebel leader Riek Machar in the northern oil-producing state of Unity, a spokesman for the rebels said on Sunday. 

Government soldiers and allied militia “advanced on Leer town on Feb.1, 2014 destroying everything on their path. (President Salva) Kiir’s forces burned down the whole of Leer town and the entire surrounding villages,” a statement from rebel spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said. 

There was no independent confirmation that Leer had changed hands. 

But medical charity Doctors without Borders (MSF, Medecins sans Frontieres) reported on Friday that a team of its local health workers had taken “several dozen of the most seriously ill patients from Leer hospital with them into the bush, fearing for their safety.” 

“Other patients who were well enough to leave of their own accord also fled, and there are no longer any patients or staff left at Leer hospital,” MSF said. 

Koang accused the government troops of having hunted down and killed women and children and elderly people who had gone to hide in nearby bushes and swampy areas. 

“The latest destruction of Leer town has no strategic, operational or tactical importance,” the spokesman said, accusing Kiir of having merely derived “satisfaction” from destroying Machar’s hometown. 

Meanwhile, an advance team of monitors sent by east African nations arrived in South Sudan on Sunday to set up a mission tasked with observing a shaky ceasefire agreed by government and rebel forces. 

The warring sides signed the ceasefire on Jan.23 to end weeks of fighting, but sporadic clashes have continued, underlining the challenge regional mediators face when peace talks resume in neighbouring Ethiopia next week. 

Diplomats expect the monitors will focus on the three flashpoint towns of Malakal and Bentiu, near the country’s main oilfields and Bor, where some of the heaviest clashes have occurred, and the capital Juba. “We will start our mission, at least the teams will be deployed, within the next week,” General Gebreegzabher Mebrahtu, a retired Ethiopian General who is leading the advance team, told reporters in Juba. 

The team’s first task was to meet government officials and non-state organisations and conduct recces of possible areas for deployment, the regional IGAD grouping, which brokered the truce, said in a statement. 

Machar on Friday accused Kiir of sabotaging the peace talks and waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing, in an interview at his bush hideout in remote Jonglei state.

Agencies

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