The clashes come less than a week after the two leaders agreed to work to preserve peace and establish a unified command of the armed forces, as stipulated in the peace agreement concluded in 2018 to end five years of bloody civil war.
The fighting revolves around the Kuch Mermer camp in Unity State, which includes forces loyal to Machar (the SPLM/A in the opposition) and has been attacked by army-backed militias, according to officials from both sides meeting in the capital, Juba.
The Acting Chief of Staff of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army in Opposition, General Gabriel Dub Lamm, stressed “the need to solve the problem of insecurity… urgently”.
His statement came during a press conference on arrangements for the unification of the armed forces, which was held with the Deputy Commander of the Southern Sudan Army, General Thuy Channy Riet.
The two military officials indicated that a meeting will be held between the leaderships of the two parties on this issue. “We are ordering all forces to cease hostilities and respect the ceasefire agreement,” said Thuy Chani Riet.
Despite worryingly escalating tensions between the two sides in recent weeks, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar recently agreed to move forward with the formation of a unified command of the armed forces.
And the presidency announced in a statement on Friday that the two men held a new “brief” meeting regarding this unified command as well as the recent battles, including those that took place in Unity State.
The statement added that “President Salva Kiir Mayardit indicated that the confrontations must stop and that the population in the affected areas must live in peace and coexist in harmony,” noting that the two leaders agreed to hold a new meeting without specifying a date.
Since its independence from Sudan in 2011, the country has witnessed crisis after crisis and suffered floods, starvation, waves of violence and political disputes, which prevented it from recovering from the bloody civil war that left nearly 400,000 dead and four million displaced between 2013 and 2018.
Under a peace agreement signed in 2018, power was shared within the framework of a national unity government installed in February 2020, with Kiir as president and Machar as vice president, but the terms of the peace agreement were mostly not implemented.
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