By Reuters
The detention of South Sudan’s First Vice President Riek Machar under house arrest has effectively collapsed the peace deal that ended the 2013-2018 civil war, his party said on Thursday.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission in South Sudan called for restraint, saying the country stood on the brink of relapsing into widespread conflict.
“This will not only devastate South Sudan but also affect the entire region,” UNMISS said in a statement.
The five-year civil war, which was fought largely along ethnic lines, left hundreds of thousands of people dead in the country that gained independence from Sudan in 2011.
Oyet Nathaniel Pierino, deputy chair of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, said Machar’s detention meant the agreement had been “abrogated”.
It “effectively brings the agreement to a collapse, thus the prospect for peace and stability in South Sudan has now been put into serious jeopardy”, he said.
The SPLM-IO said South Sudan’s
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