Report: South Sudan recruits new force, outside peace deal

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A new report says South Sudan’s National Security Service has recruited a force of 10,000 fighters in President Salva Kiir’s ethnic stronghold, outside terms of country’s peace deal.

report by United Nations experts monitoring sanctions on South Sudan expresses concern over slow implementation of fragile deal signed in September 2018 to end five years of civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people.

report says South Sudan’s government has shown little interest in abiding by spirit of agreement on security and or arrangements, putting deal in peril and posing an “immediate threat” to country’s fragile peace.

A crucial deline to form a coalition government was missed this month after opposition leer Riek Machar criticized slow progress in security arrangements.