South Sudan's army is deploying more forces around the country's largest still operational oilfield after at least 56 people died in fresh fighting, Defense Minister Kuol Manyang Juuk said.

Government troops clashed with rebels Oct. 14 near Malakal town in the African nation's oil-rich Eastern Nile state, Juuk said Monday by phone from the capital, Juba. He said the violence in the country's northeast was instigated by a militia leader previously affiliated with former vice president and rebel chief Riek Machar. There was no independent confirmation of the fighting.

"Small pockets" of insurgents are moving toward the Paloch oilfield and could be planning to attack production facilities, according to Juuk. Similar violence in the north claimed at least 60 lives in the past week, the army said Friday.

A civil war that began in South Sudan in December 2013 has left tens of thousands of people dead, with a peace agreement that saw Machar join a transitional government thrown into turmoil in July, when renewed violence forced him from the capital. Crude output in a country with sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest estimated reserves, has fallen to about 130,000 barrels per day since the conflict began.</s>A flare-up in violence in South Sudan this month is raising fears that a fragile peace deal reached last year will be derailed, re-igniting the war that has engulfed the country since 2013. By Peter Martell (AFP/File)

Malakal (South Sudan) (AFP) - At least 56 rebels and four government soldiers were killed over the weekend as heavy clashes erupted in northeastern South Sudan, an army spokesman said Monday.

"The dead bodies of the rebels confirmed after count was 56 ... on our side we lost four SPLA fighters and twenty were wounded," said Sudan People's Liberation Army spokesman Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang.</s>Malakal. At least 56 rebels and four government soldiers were killed over the weekend as heavy clashes erupted in northeastern South Sudan, an army spokesman said Monday.

Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) spokesman Brigadier General Lul Ruai Koang accused forces aligned with former vice president Riek Machar of attacking government troops near the second largest city of Malakal.

“The rebels of Riek Machar attacked us in two places of our defence, that is Wajwok and Lelo, and we heavily impacted on them. The dead bodies of the rebels confirmed after count was 56,” he said, adding that the clashes began Friday evening and ended on Saturday.

Forces loyal to President Salva Kiir invited journalists to the region on Sunday to show they were in control of the area, and an AFP photographer reported seeing up to 40 bodies in the places he could access.

South Sudan, which gained independence in July 2011, descended into war just two and a half years later when Kiir in December 2013 accused his former deputy and political rival Machar of plotting a coup.

Numerous attempts to shore up a fragile truce failed, and in a major setback to peace efforts, fierce clashes erupted in Juba on July 8 this year between Kiir’s forces and those loyal to Machar. (AFP)

The international community has expressed deep concern over a spread in violence since the July clashes, which pushed the number of refugees from the war-scarred nation past the one-million mark, according to the UNHCR.

In a further blow to peace hopes, Machar last month urged “a popular armed resistance” against his rival’s government.

Machar, who fled to Khartoum after the July fighting, last week left for South Africa for medical tests.

An influential group of South Sudanese politicians known as the ‘former detainees’ after their arrest when war broke out in 2013, warned last week that “the country is on the edge of a precipice”.

They said they were “greatly disturbed by the recent increase of war and violent conflict all over agin; its ever deepening intensity and level of brutality; an apparently all-pervasive and creeping sense of resentment and hate”.(AFP)</s>South Sudan government soldiers stand in trenches in Lalo, outside Malakal on October 16, 2016. Heavy fighting in the area broke out on October 14 killing dozens of people, after rebels reported they would try to seize control of Malakal. The govt accused forces aligned with former vice president Riek Machar of attacking government troops near the second largest city of Malakal. AFP PHOTO

Heavy fighting in Malakal in northeastern South Sudan killed dozens of people over the weekend, a military spokesman has said, after rebels reported they would try to seize control of the town.

At least 56 rebels and four government soldiers were killed with another 20 army officers injured, army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said.

"Our forces were able to successfully drive them (rebels) back with heavy casualties. Over 56 rebels were killed," he told a group of journalists whom the government had flown to Malakal on Sunday to see the situation.

"We came here ... to let the people of South Sudan, and in particular the region, know that Malakal was not captured by the rebels as reported over the weekend."

It was not possible to independently verify the reported casualty figures, but a Reuters photographer who flew to Lalo, a camp near Malakal, with the military saw 15 bodies nearby, a burnt building within the base, and bodies scattered in other positions. Soldiers said they were expecting another attack.

On Friday, the rebels said they had captured Lalo and the nearby location of Wajwok, and planned to seize Malakal.

"We want to make sure that the government are dislodged from the town and we take control," deputy rebel spokesperson Dickson Gatluak told Reuters by phone from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Oil-rich South Sudan descended into civil war in December 2013 when a row between President Salva Kiir and his sacked deputy Riek Machar ended with fighting that often occurred along ethnic fault lines. Both sides have targeted civilians, human rights groups say.

The fighting initially ended with a peace deal signed in 2015, but violations have been frequent, and heavy fighting broke out again in July. Machar fled the country and is now in South Africa for medical treatment.

"We realised that there is not any political space, there is not any political settlement in (the capital) Juba. The international community and the IGAD itself have failed us ... they failed to keep that fragile peace agreement," he said, referring to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a political bloc of East African countries.

Last week, violence in South Sudan killed at least 60 people, the military said. The United Nations said it had reports of civilians being burned alive in buses.</s>MALAKAL, South Sudan (AP) — This used to be South Sudan’s second largest city, a bustling center on the White Nile River of more than 120,000 people, many employed in the oil fields nearby.

Today Malakal is rubble and almost entirely deserted by civilians, a city emptied by three years of civil war and now by new rounds of fighting. Following clashes in the city’s outskirts last week, the army flew in journalists to show that the government retains control of the strategic city, even though rebels still vow to take it.

The army said 56 rebels and four government soldiers were killed in the fighting.

Racing through the city on the back of a pickup truck and traversing the Nile with amphibious vehicles, the soldiers still exhibited a battle high.

“I want to kill,” one soldier snarled, approaching the scene of the fighting.

Many identified the corpses of rebel fighters by their ethnicity.

“Nuer, Nuer,” one soldier said, pointing at bodies he said were from the Nuer tribe among the dozens scattered in a burned field. South Sudan’s second largest group, the Nuer, largely follow rebel leader Riek Machar, who is now in exile but vows to return.

“Shilluk,” said another soldier pointing to a nearby body, calling out another ethnic group.

The soldiers’ identification of the corpses by their ethnicity is an indication that South Sudan’s current conflict continues to be fueled by tribal differences. Fears grow that this East African nation is on the brink of another catastrophic outbreak of violence between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Machar, more than a year after a peace deal that has been violated repeatedly by fighting.

Standing in a burnt field, army spokesman Lul Ruai Koang urged journalists to take photos of fighters’ bloated corpses.

He emphasized that the rebels had attacked army positions, justifying the deadly response.

“We have not violated the permanent cease-fire,” Koang said, adding that the location of the bodies near army positions proved that the army had been fighting in self-defense.

South Sudan’s peace deal, signed in August 2015, was supposed to end the country’s civil war that began in December 2013 and killed tens of thousands. But the agreement was never fully implemented, and now it is rapidly crumbling.

Hundreds of civilians died in July after clashes broke out in the capital, Juba, and fighting has again spread to many parts of the country.

A rise in ethnic tensions began after the July fighting, which saw ethnically targeted killings, according to a recent U.N. panel of experts report.

Kiir is largely supported by the Dinka, the largest of South Sudan’s more than 40 tribes.

There are important exceptions to South Sudan’s tribal narrative. A handful of prominent figures in the government are Nuer and Equatorian, and some figures in the opposition are Dinka. Fighting in some areas of South Sudan is mainly driven by local disputes, not tribalism.

In public, Kiir has urged reconciliation and fought against the ethnic tensions, saying in a recent speech that he cannot “become a tribal leader.”</s>Journalists in South Sudan continue to endure hard times in the execution of their duties as the government sustains its onslaught on the freedom of the press and expression.

Their woes can be traced back to the start of the conflict in 2013.

Mr Denis Dumo, based in Juba, testified that the current cut back on media freedom in South Sudan was connected to the political turmoil in the oil-exporting country.

“Despite the presence of media laws to guarantee press freedom in South Sudan, we journalists still find ourselves in danger as a result of the information we produce and publish for the public consumption,” Mr Dumo narrated.

Between July and October this year alone, South Sudan lost four journalists, adding to the total 12 journalists who lost their lives in line of duty since independent in 2011.

Mr Dumo, however, said most perpetrators of violence against media professionals went unpunished, hence the increasing fear within the media landscape, forcing many to abandon the profession and others to flee into exile.

“It is not a surprise that many of us who are surviving these threats in Juba have to exercise self-censorship, if we want to remain alive,” he said.

“The freedom of the press means access to information and the platform where journalists can report freely. But it is very unfortunate things are not the way we expect,” he said.

Although the South Sudan Transitional Constitution charged the government to provide protection to all citizens, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, race and profession, that has not been the case for the journalists who ply their trade at home.

Given the circumstances, Mr Dumo observes, it would be least surprising if journalists self-censored to stay alive.

“My advice to my fellow colleagues is that they should think twice before covering controversial stories because we (journalists) in South Sudan are in an environment in which anyone who has a gun can take the law into their own hands,” he said.</s>MALAKAL, South Sudan — This used to be South Sudan's second largest city, a bustling on the White Nile River of more than 120,000 people, many employed in the oil fields nearby.

Today Malakal is rubble and almost entirely deserted by civilians, a city emptied by three years of civil war and now by new rounds of fighting. Following clashes in the city's outskirts last week, the army flew in journalists to show that the government retains control of the strategic city, even though rebels still vow to take it.

Racing through the city on the back of a pickup truck and traversing the Nile with amphibious vehicles, the soldiers still exhibited a battle high.

"Nuer, Nuer," one soldier said, pointing at bodies he said were from the Nuer tribe among the dozens scattered in a burned field. South Sudan's second largest group, the Nuer, largely follow rebel leader Riek Machar, who is now in exile but vows to return.

The soldiers' identification of the corpses by their ethnicity is an indication that South Sudan's current conflict continues to be fueled by tribal differences. Fears grow that this East African nation is on the brink of another catastrophic outbreak of violence between President Salva Kiir and rebel leader Machar, more than a year after a peace deal that has been violated repeatedly by fighting.

"We have not violated the permanent cease-fire," Koang said, adding that the location of the bodies near army positions proved that the army had been fighting in self- .

South Sudan's peace deal, signed in August 2015, was supposed to end the country's civil war that began in December 2013 and killed tens of thousands. But the agreement was never fully implemented, and now it is rapidly crumbling.

Hundreds of civilians died in July after clashes broke out in the capital, Juba, and fighting has again spread to many parts of the country.

There are important exceptions to South Sudan's tribal narrative. A handful of prominent figures in the government are Nuer and Equatorian, and some figures in the opposition are Dinka. Fighting in some areas of South Sudan is mainly driven by local disputes, not tribalism.
Clashes between government troops and rebels in South Sudan, leave at least 56 people killed.