COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Norway’s foreign ministry said on Wednesday it was temporarily shutting its embassy in South Sudan’s capital Juba due to the deteriorating security situation in the country.
South Sudan President Salva Kiir last week sacked the governor of Upper Nile state, where clashes have escalated between government troops and an ethnic militia he accuses of allying with his rival, First Vice President Riek Machar.
The standoff has heightened concerns that the world’s newest nation could slide back into conflict some seven years after its emergence from a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people.
The Norwegian embassy’s work will be carried out from Kenya’s capital Nairobi until further notice, Norway’s foreign ministry said in a statement, adding that the Juba mission would be reopened when the situation allowed it.
(Reporting by Terje Solsvik, editing by Louise Rasmussen)
