Seven killed in the South Sudan Hospital and Market Bombing, says Charity Says

At least seven people were killed after a hospital and market in South Sudan were bombed, a medical charity has said, while the fears grow from a return to the civil war.

Doctors without borders (MSF) said that helicopter guns dropped a bomb at the hospital pharmacy that it was in Old Fangak, the State Jonglei, who burned it before he shot for 30 minutes on the city. A drone then bombarded a local market, AZG said.

The hospital is the only thing in Fangak County, which has a population of more than 110,000 people, AZG said, and all its medical supplies were destroyed.

The charity called the attack, causing 20 people to be injured, a “clear violation of international humanitarian law”.

In recent weeks, Nicholas Haysom, who leads the UN mission in South Sudan, has warned that the country “falters on the edge of a return to full civil war”.

Those worries were fired by an escalating feud between President Salva Kiir and vice-president Riek Machar.

Hours before the bombing the head of the army, Paul Majok Nang, promised punishing strikes after several inland vessels were hijacked on a river.

He blamed those attacks on a militia related to vice-president Machar, who did not comment on the claim.

Machar was arrested in March, together with various of his employees and accused of trying to generate a rebellion.

The government has recently mentioned provinces that it regards as hostile – in other words associated with Machar.

That increased the suspicion that South Sudan could be on its way to another conflict with the two largest ethnic groups in the country.

South Sudan became independent of Sudan in 2011, but two years later a civil war broke out when President Kiir Machar declined as a vice-president and accused him of planning a coup.

The subsequent conflict, largely fought along ethnic lines between supporters of the two leaders, resulted in an estimated 400,000 deaths and 2.5 million people who were forced from their homes – more than a fifth of the population.

A peace agreement was reached in 2018 and a unit government forged with the same two men at the helm, but elections that should have been called since then did not happen.

The current crisis was fueled earlier this year when the militia of the White Army, which was allied to Machar during the civil war, clashed with the army in the state of Upper Nile and a military base in Nasir.

Then, in March, the UN helicopter tried to evacuate troops came under fire and left several dead, including a high-ranking army general.

Rights groups have called for the army to stop bombing civil areas.

Additional reporting by Yemisi Adegoke & Nichola Mandil