South Sudanese government forces have retaken the town of Nasir which had been a flashpoint in a deepening political crisis, an army spokesman said on Sunday.
Clashes around Nasir in the northeastern Upper Nile State have helped unravel a power-sharing agreement between President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, Vice-President Riek Machar.
The violence has threatened to plunge South Sudan, which became the world’s youngest country after gaining independence in 2011, back into civil war.
Kiir’s allies accuse Machar’s forces of fomenting unrest in Nasir in league with the so-called White Army, a loose band of armed youths from Machar’s Nuer ethnic community.
An estimated 6,000 White Army combatants overran a military encampment in Nasir in early March, killing a senior general and many others.
South Sudan’s army has been battling to retake the area with support from the Ugandan army.
“The National Army Spokesman would like to officially announce to own rank and file and the members of the public on re-liberation of the historical town of Nasir,” spokesman Lul Ruai Koang said in a statement on Sunday.
The army said this week it had also taken the nearby town of Ulang, long controlled by Machar’s forces.
Kiir and Machar fought a five-year civil war that killed some 400,000 people until they agreed a power-sharing deal in 2018.
The deal has all but collapsed in recent weeks as Kiir expands his control in several areas.
Several of Machar’s political and military allies have been arrested in recent weeks, while Machar himself was placed under house arrest in late March.
Clashes around the country have killed almost 200 people and displaced an estimated 125,000 since March, the United Nations said last week.
Human Rights Watch said the army has dropped improvised incendiary devices and killed nearly 60 people over a month-long period in Upper Nile State.
