President fires ministers allied to rival Machar

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir fired six ministers allied to his rival Riek Machar late on Tuesday, widening a political rift in the country. Kiir filled the vacant posts, including that of petroleum minister, with people linked to a breakaway faction of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, further aggravating divisions between senior politicians in the oil-producing nation. […]

South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir fired six ministers allied to his rival Riek Machar late on Tuesday, widening a political rift in the country.
Kiir filled the vacant posts, including that of petroleum minister, with people linked to a breakaway faction of Machar’s SPLM-IO party, further aggravating divisions between senior politicians in the oil-producing nation.
About 60,000 people have fled an outbreak of fighting between the two men’s supporters over the past three weeks, the United Nations says, on top of the hundreds of thousands already forced to flee in two years of ethnically charged violence.
U.N. emergency relief coordinator, Stephen O’Brien, said the violence and “the culture of impunity” must stop before the humanitarian crisis worsened even further.
“The people of this country have suffered far too much. There is no military solution to this conflict, the fighting must stop and the atrocities must end immediately,” he told a news conference during a visit to Juba.