South Sudan rebels say government violating new cease-fire

Rebels in South Sudan accused government forces of attacking their positions, despite a cease-fire agreement signed one day earlier. 

Brig. Gen. Lul Ruai Koang, a spokesman for the opposition, said Friday that government forces were attacking rebel positions in oil-rich Unity state and in Jonglei state.

Koang callled it a "clear violation" of the peace deal signed in Ethiopia on Thursday and said rebel forces would defend themselves against attacks.

In South Sudan, military spokesman Col. Philip Aguer said he is not aware of any new violence but said there was fighting in Jonglei on Thursday. Aguer said if new fighting has occurred "it is because rebels have attacked" government soldiers.

Akshaya Kumar, a Sudan and South Sudan policy analyst with the Enough Project, a Washington-based non-profit focused on curbing genocide and crimes against humanity, told Al Jazeera on Friday that the cease-fire agreement is "fragile." 

"The cease-fire is really just the first step on the long road for South Sudanese to make their way to peace," Kumar told Al Jazeera's Stephanie Sy. "We've heard in the past 12 hours, before the cease-fire even went into place, that both sides have been scrambling in a last-minute, last-ditch effort to take control of areas." 

Fighting broke out on Dec. 15 in South Sudan, the world's newest country, killing thousands of people, and battles over the past month have forced more than half a million South Sudanese to flee their homes. 

Over the past week, government forces recaptured two main cities under rebel control — Bor and Malakal.

More than 600,000 people have been displaced by the violence in the country. Of those, 15 percent have fled to neighboring countries, 12 percent are now living at United Nations bases inside the country and 73 percent are living outside of U.N. bases, according to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. 

South Sudanese President Salva Kiir insisted the unrest was sparked by a coup mounted by soldiers loyal to his political rival and former Vice President Riek Machar. However, that account has been disputed by some officials with the ruling party who said violence broke out when presidential guards from Kiir's majority Dinka tribe tried to disarm guards from the Nuer ethnic group of Machar.

Kumar said that despite the fact that the country "continues to struggle with underdevelopment" and "difficulties of forcing a national identity," referring to inter-ethnic clashes that have taken place, people in the country want to see a cessation of violence. 

"Most people — those who aren't carrying the weapons — are really interested in forging a peace and moving back on the path of freedom and prosperity. That said, the inter-ethnic clashes that we've seen and the violence moving along tribal lines is really an indication of the ways in which leaders have instrumentalized those identities to mobilize their constituencies and get people to fight behind them and on their side," she said. 

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press