JUBA: At least 10 people have died and dozens others injured after a hand grenade exploded in a night club in South Sudan's western town of Yambio, police said on Monday.

James Monday Enoka, a police commissioner in Yambio, told Reuters six of the injured were in critical condition and that they had been evacuated to the capital Juba for medical treatment.

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The explosion occurred on Friday around 11 p.m. local time when someone threw "a hand grenade into a club where 500 people were dancing...we found four people dead on (the) spot," Enoka said.

He said the death toll had increased to 10 by Monday while dozens others were injured.

He said the incident was not related to the ongoing civil war which has gripped South Sudan since 2013, pitting President Salva Kiir's military against opponents led by his former Vice President Riek Machar.

"It is an isolated criminal act and the criminal will face a court of law," he said.

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At least 190,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict since it started.

The warring sides last month signed a deal that is expected to end the fighting and return a measure of order and security to Africa's youngest nation.

(Reporting by Denis Dumo; Writing by Elias Biryabarema, Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)</s>The following content is sourced from external partners. We cannot guarantee that it is suitable for the visually or hearing impaired.

This content was published on October 1, 2018 3:34 PM

JUBA (Reuters) - At least 10 people have died and dozens others injured after a hand grenade exploded in a night club in South Sudan's western town of Yambio, police said on Monday.

James Monday Enoka, a police commissioner in Yambio, told Reuters six of the injured were in critical condition and that they had been evacuated to the capital Juba for medical treatment.

The explosion occurred on Friday around 11 p.m. local time when someone threw "a hand grenade into a club where 500 people were dancing...we found four people dead on (the) spot," Enoka said.

He said the death toll had increased to 10 by Monday while dozens others were injured.

He said the incident was not related to the ongoing civil war which has gripped South Sudan since 2013, pitting President Salva Kiir's military against opponents led by his former Vice President Riek Machar.

"It is an isolated criminal act and the criminal will face a court of law," he said.

At least 190,000 people are estimated to have died in the conflict since it started.

The warring sides last month signed a deal that is expected to end the fighting and return a measure of order and security to Africa's youngest nation.</s>NYAL, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan’s government claims the shattering five-year civil war is finally over, but there is considerable skepticism. It wasn’t helped by the sight of President Salva Kiir refusing to shake…

NYAL, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan’s government claims the shattering five-year civil war is finally over, but there is considerable skepticism. It wasn’t helped by the sight of President Salva Kiir refusing to shake the hand of rival Riek Machar after they signed a power-sharing deal this month, according to video footage seen by The Associated Press.

This latest attempt at peace already shows cracks, with the armed opposition last week saying several key issues, including reconciliation, are yet to be resolved as the warring forces prepare to merge and Machar is set to return to the capital as Kiir’s deputy once more.

Machar’s side won’t sign a final agreement that doesn’t ensure “accountability and justice and free and fair elections” at the end of the three-year transition period, chairman Mabior Garang de Mabior told AP.

Even as negotiations continue in Sudan, which has taken the lead in peace talks as it eyes South Sudan’s oil resources, the United States and many South Sudanese express deep concern that the fragile peace deal will end in violence as the previous one did in July 2016, with Machar fleeing his vice president post, and the country, on foot.

Now this East African nation, whose civil war along largely ethnic lines has created Africa’s largest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, nervously awaits the rebel leader’s return.

South Sudan’s government acknowledges that some issues remain but says the current deal is genuine.

“It is the end of the war and the beginning of a new era,” said Maal Maker Thiong, who works in the president’s office.

The civil war in the world’s youngest nation has killed tens of thousands of people and sent more than 2 million fleeing since the fighting erupted between supporters of Kiir and then-deputy Machar in December 2013, two years after the country won independence from Sudan. Half of the remaining population of roughly 12 million is near starvation, according to U.N. agencies.

The idea that the two men whose rivalry has caused so much destruction are now in charge of finding peace has alarmed some in the international community and on the ground.

“We are concerned that the arrangements agreed to date are not realistic or sustainable,” the U.S., Britain and Norway said in a statement this month.

“We have seen time again that power-sharing is a recipe for more conflict in South Sudan and that Salva Kiir and Riek Machar are in fact obstacles to ending the war and not vehicles for resolving the conflict,” said Payton Knopf, a former coordinator of the U.N. panel of experts on South Sudan and former U.S. diplomat.

As part of the new peace agreement, Machar will return as one of five vice presidents. Government and opposition forces will merge into one national army. A three-year transitional period will follow, culminating in elections. Machar is expected to return within eight months, but opposition chairman Mabior said that will happen only with signs the agreement is being carried out.

During a visit this month to one of the last opposition-held areas in South Sudan, the AP spoke with more than a dozen people. All said they were doubtful that peace would prevail.

The captain of the opposition’s military intelligence for Panyijiar County, James Malieth, said he was shocked when he learned that his forces soon would have to merge with government troops.

“You can’t fight with someone and then be put together with them,” he said. “Our hearts haven’t yet calmed down from war.” It will take years before they can fight side-by-side with soldiers who killed his colleagues, he added.

News of the peace deal has filtered down to wary people in rural areas.

Seated on a straw mat outside her new home, 28-year-old Nyadet Kai cradled her small son to her chest. The mother of five said she escaped her hometown of Leer in May when government soldiers attacked, raping women and abducting children.

Kai lost her husband to the war in 2013 and has been displaced seven times since then. She now seeks shelter on a remote island in the swamps, 45 minutes by boat from the opposition-held town of Nyal in Unity state.

“In 2015 they signed something but there was fighting again,” she said of the previous peace agreement. “I’ll believe there’s peace when the government removes its soldiers from my town.”

Another island resident, Mary Nyataba, playfully wrestled with her dog, which in disgust she had named after Kiir’s backside.

“I called him that because the president has killed so many people,” the 40-year-old mother of five said. Stroking the dog’s nose with her thumb, she said she might change the name if peace ever comes.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>MALAKAL, South Sudan >> 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>By The Associated Press

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Sudan’s foreign minister is calling for implementation of the latest agreement to end the civil war in neighboring South Sudan and urging the U.N. Security Council to quickly approve doubling a…

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Sudan’s foreign minister is calling for implementation of the latest agreement to end the civil war in neighboring South Sudan and urging the U.N. Security Council to quickly approve doubling a regional protection force to monitor the accord.

Eldirdiri Mohamed Ahmed told Monday’s final session of the General Assembly’s ministerial meeting that Sudan hopes rival leaders in South Sudan will “give peace a chance.”

He said regional leaders have called for the regional protection force in South Sudan to be doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 soldiers — with Sudan, Uganda, Djibouti and Somalia contributing troops.

Ahmed also cited “a real change in relations” between Sudan and South Sudan, including the possibility of resolving the Abyei border dispute and conflicts in the Sudanese states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, written or redistributed.</s>UNITED NATIONS — Sudan's foreign minister is calling for implementation of the latest agreement to end the civil war in neighboring South Sudan and urging the U.N. Security Council to quickly approve doubling a regional protection force to monitor the accord.

Eldirdiri Mohamed Ahmed told Monday's final session of the General Assembly's ministerial meeting that Sudan hopes rival leaders in South Sudan will "give peace a chance."

He said regional leaders have called for the regional protection force in South Sudan to be doubled from 4,000 to 8,000 soldiers — with Sudan, Uganda, Djibouti and Somalia contributing troops.

Ahmed also cited "a real change in relations" between Sudan and South Sudan, including the possibility of resolving the Abyei border dispute and conflicts in the Sudanese states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile.
A hand grenade explodes in a night club in the city of Yambio in South Sudan, killing at least ten people and injuring dozens of others. The police commissioner in the city confirmed that the explosion is not related to the ongoing civil war in the country.