UN Security Council meets as South Sudan fighting rages

The United Nations Security Council has called on South Sudan’s neighbors to help end renewed fighting between government forces and former rebels in the country.

In a closed-door meeting on Sunday, the council also demanded that both sides of the conflict “do their utmost to control their respective forces, urgently end the fighting and prevent the spread of violence."

However, gunfire erupted again in the capital Juba on Monday amid reports of heavy explosions as clashes entered their fifth day.

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan said clashes restarted near its compound in Jebel, where some 30,000 civilians have taken refuge. 

Witnesses saw two helicopters firing apparently in the direction of South Sudan’s Vice President Riek Machar's political and military headquarters.

Machar said his loyalists had been bombarded by forces of President Salva Kiir, showing he was "not interested in peace."

"I urge calm and restraint throughout these skirmishes. I'm safe. No one should take laws in their own hands to destabilize this country," he wrote on his Twitter account. 

Fresh violence in recent weeks has raised fears of a renewed civil war which first broke out in December 2013, leaving tens of thousands of people dead. 

The battles are the first since Machar returned to the country to take up the post of vice president in a unity government in April, under an accord to end the civil war.

On Sunday, around 50 to 60 casualties were reported in clashes in Juba as former rebels and government soldiers exchanged fire in several parts of the capital. The violence forced thousands of people to flee the city.

More than 300 people, including many civilians and a Chinese peacekeeper, lost their lives during heavy gun battles in Juba on Thursday and Friday.

In its Sunday meeting, the Security Council further urged the sides to "genuinely commit themselves to the full and immediate implementation of the peace agreement,” and asked for additional peacekeepers in the country.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has said he was “shocked and appalled” by the fighting between the government troops and rebels, urging both sides to halt the violence.

“This senseless violence is unacceptable and has the potential of reversing the progress made so far in the peace process,” Ban said on Friday.

The new clashes erupted just as the world's youngest country was about to mark its fifth anniversary of independence from Sudan on Saturday.

A spokesman for Machar was quoted as saying that South Sudan was "back to war" and accused President Kiir of not being serious about the peace agreement.

He said "hundreds" of Machar's troops had died on Sunday as they began advancing on Juba from different directions.

South Sudan became independent from Sudan in 2011 but two years later it plunged into a brutal civil war that has killed tens of thousands of civilians and forced more than two million people to flee their homes.

The war began after President Kiir sacked the cabinet and accused Machar of planning a coup, forcing the latter to flee the country before returning just in April under the peace deal.

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