UN voices concern over South Sudan clashes

The United Nations (UN) said on Friday it was “deeply concerned” by clashes between South Sudan's military and opposition forces in a southern state, where displaced civilians said they had been left without food.

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The world’s youngest nation, which is deeply impoverished, has long been troubled by insecurity and instability.

But recent fighting between factions allied to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival Vice-President Riek Machar have sparked worries of renewed war.

International observers fear a return to the five-year civil war that cost some 400,000 lives and was ended by a 2018 peace deal which brought the two rivals together in a unity government, but which increasingly appears to be unravelling.