UNITED NATIONS (AP) – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon fired the commander of the peacekeeping force in South Sudan on Tuesday after an independent investigation sharply criticized the military response to deadly attacks in July on a U.N. compound housing 27,000 displaced people.
U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced the dismissal of Kenyan Lt. Gen. Johnson Mogoa Kimani Ondieki shortly after the investigators’ report was released, saying the U.N. chief was “deeply distressed” by the findings.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has been riven by ethnic violence since shortly after gaining its independence from Sudan in 2011. Civil war broke out in 2013 when government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, battled rebels led by his former vice president Riek Machar, who is a Nuer. A peace agreement was signed in August 2015, but fighting, that has left tens of thousands dead and more than 2 million displaced, continues.
A confidential U.N. report obtained by The Associated Press in September said the deadly fighting in July was directed by the highest levels of Kiir’s government. Among the targets were the U.N. peacekeeping base known as UN House and the adjacent camp where some 27,000 displaced civilians, who are Nuer, had sought safety and the Terrain Camp, a private compound just over a kilometer (0.6 miles) away where U.N. staff, aid workers and local staff were housed.
The report said “a lack of leadership on the part of key senior mission personnel culminated in a chaotic and ineffective response to the violence” at UN House and the compound for displaced civilians.