COPENHAGEN: 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.
Norway temporarily shuts South Sudan embassy over security
https://arab.news/5z3z4
Norway temporarily shuts South Sudan embassy over security
- South Sudan President Salva Kiir last week sacked the governor of Upper Nile state
- The Norwegian embassy’s work will be carried out from Nairobi
UN official: 100,000 Lebanese in shelters after ‘unprecedented’ Israeli warnings
- More than a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75%-80% of whom were not in shelters
BEIRUT: About 100,000 people have fled to shelters in Lebanon and the number of displaced is expected to rapidly increase following “unprecedented” Israeli warnings ordering people out of large parts of the country, a senior UN official said on Friday.
With war raging between Israel and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Israeli military on Thursday ordered residents out of Beirut’s southern suburbs, including areas controlled by the Iran-backed group, as well as parts of the eastern Bekaa Valley, after ordering people out of a swathe of south Lebanon on Wednesday.
“What we saw in the last couple of days is, I would say … unprecedented in terms of the scale here in Lebanon of the warnings, the displacement orders, and the reaction, the panic also, that this has all created,” Imran Riza, UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Lebanon, told Reuters.
“At the moment, there are about 100,000 people that are, as of this morning, in some 477 collective shelters. There are some 57 shelters that still have some space, but basically the capacity is being reached very, very quickly,” Riza said.
Noting the panic and gridlock caused by the Israeli displacement orders, Riza said: “We had people moving all over the place and not knowing where to go to. So yes, I think we’re going to have an increased number quite quickly,” he said.
He noted that more than a million people were uprooted in Lebanon during a war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2024, 75-80 percent of whom were not in shelters. “This time again, the majority will not be in shelters probably,” he said.
