South Sudanese forces have arrested the petroleum minister and several senior military officials allied with First Vice President Riek Machar as soldiers surrounded his home in the capital, Juba.
Deputy army chief, General Gabriel Duop Lam, a Machar loyalist, was held earlier in the week, while Petroleum Minister Puot Kang Chol was arrested alongside his bodyguards and family.
No reason was given for the arrests, which came after an armed group allied to Machar overran an army base in the country’s northern Upper Nile state.
Machar, whose political rivalry with President Salva Kiir has in the past exploded into civil war, said last month that the firing of several of his allies from posts in the government threatened a 2018 peace deal between him and Kiir.
The deal had ended a five-year civil war in which more than 400,000 people were killed. Water Minister Pal Mai Deng, spokesman for Machar’s SPLM-IO party, said Lam’s arrest “puts the entire peace agreement at risk”.
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