Night had already fallen on Juba, the capital of South Sudan, at about 7pm on 24 March, when an orange glow lit up the sky. It didn’t take long before news spread that the government had carried out an airstrike. For weeks, clashes had taken place in remote parts of the country between the army of the president, Salva Kiir, and opposition forces, but never that close to the capital. The target – an opposition base in Wunaliet, 15km west of the city – was consumed in flames.
Just hours before the airstrike, Nicholas Haysom, the head of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss), had warned that the political and security situation in the country had deteriorated. “We are left with no other conclusion but to assess that South Sudan is teetering on the edge of a relapse into civil war,” he told a press briefing.
