South Sudan’s opposition has said that the overnight arrest of First Vice President Riek Machar, longtime rival to President Salva Kiir, has invalidated their 2018 peace deal and risked plunging the country back into war.
A convoy of 20 heavily armed vehicles entered Machar’s residence in the capital, Juba, late on Wednesday and arrested him, according to a statement issued by a member of his party – a dramatic escalation of a conflict that has been building for weeks in the world’s youngest country.
According to foreign reports military vehicles came to Riek Machar’s residence in the night and forcibly disarmed all of his guards. They removed all of the phones and the laptops from the property, arrested the guards and took them away to an unknown location, leaving only Machar at the residence.
The area has been cut off by soldiers, however in other parts of the city, life is continuing as normal. This comes off the back of weeks of escalating violence which the Sudan People’s Liberation Army In Opposition, or SPLM/IO describes as a series of attacks by President Kiir’s forces, in breach of the peace deal.
The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) has called on all parties to exercise restraint.
UMISS chief Nicholas Haysom said the country risked losing the “hard-won gains of the past seven years.