Germany’s embassy in South Sudan is temporarily closed due to civil war concerns

The German foreign ministry announced on Saturday that it has temporarily closed its mission in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, due to escalating tensions that have taken the East African nation dangerously near to civil war.

The governor of Upper Nile state, where fighting has erupted between government forces and an ethnic militia that he claims is siding with his opponent, First Vice President Riek Machar, was fired by South Sudanese President Salva Kiir this week.

Concerns that the world’s newest country, which emerged from a civil war that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, would relapse into violence have increased as a result of the impasse.

“South Sudan is once again on the brink of civil war,” the German foreign ministry stated on Wednesday after years of precarious peace.

“President Kiir and Vice President Machar are causing a violent spiral in the nation. They have an obligation to put an end to this needless violence and to carry out the peace deal.

Nicholas Haysom, the head of South Sudan’s UN peacekeeping mission, has expressed fear that the nation is “just a step away from a civil war.”