The US has urged the UN Security Council to impose an arms embargo and additional sanctions on South Sudan to pressure the parties to end the country's civil war - but Russia and China remain opposed.

Japan is ending its peacekeeping mission in troubled South Sudan after five years, prime minister Shinzo Abe has announced.

The soldier pointed his AK-47 at the aid worker and gave her a choice.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the Security Council to impose an arms embargo on South Sudan, sanction leaders and commanders who are blocking the implementation of a peace deal and fortify a UN peacekeeping mission.

Explosions and heavy weapons gunfire shook South Sudan’s capital Juba during a fifth day of clashes between government and opposition forces, raising the spectre of a return to civil war.

South Sudan's capital was rocked by heavy arms fire between forces loyal to the president and those of the vice president, causing widespread casualties and raising fears the country is returning to civil war.

South Sudan’s president is expected to sign a peace deal today to end a 20-month-old conflict but will list his reservations in an annex to the pact, his foreign minister said.

The Government has pledged an extra €2m to assist South Sudanese refugees in Ethiopia, following a renewed intensity of violence there.

South Sudan’s president has reached a ceasefire agreement with a rebel leader, a US official has said, after a vicious cycle of revenge killings drew international alarm.

South Sudan’s president has agreed to meet his rival as soon as next week to jump-start peace talks that have been stalled for months, US secretary of state John Kerry said.

War-torn South Sudan could become the scene of the worst famine catastrophe in Africa in decades without more aid and a ceasefire to let farmers reach their fields, the UN has warned.

South Sudan is the world’s newest nation state, but internal conflict is pushing it to the brink of disaster, says Joe Cahalan

Two warring factions from South Sudan are holding more advanced peace talks for the first time since conflict began in the country on December 15.

An African official who is working to organise peace talks between warring parties in South Sudan said that direct talks between the sides have been delayed.

Rebel forces in South Sudan must accept that “taking power by force cannot work”, the country’s foreign minister said as the two sides in a bloody conflict prepared for peace talks.

Rebels in South Sudan took control of nearly all of a strategic city, even as the government and fighters agreed to hold talks for the first time.

Fresh fighting has erupted in Bor, the contested capital of South Sudan’s Jonglei state, as rebels move to retake control from government troops.

Twenty-five thousand young men who make up a tribal militia known as the “White Army” are marching towards a contested state capital in South Sudan, an official has said, reducing hopes for a ceasefire.

South Sudan’s government has agreed at a meeting of East African leaders to end hostilities against rebels accused of trying to overthrow the young country’s regime, but the ceasefire was quickly thrown into doubt because the head of the rebellion was not invited.

South Sudan’s government has agreed to end hostilities, regional African leaders say.

More than 120,000 people have been displaced by continuing violence in South Sudan, the United Nations says, and about half are sheltering at UN compounds.

Sporadic gunfire rang out in the South Sudanese capital, Juba, overnight as the military “cleared out remnants” of a faction of soldiers accused of mounting a coup attempt, the country’s foreign minister said today amid an ongoing hunt for the former deputy president who is accused of leading the failed plot.

The chief mediator of talks aimed at ending northern Uganda’s civil war has called both sides back to talks next week, but acknowledges the rebels might not come.

The UN’s humanitarian chief, Jan Egeland, met a Ugandan rebel leader wanted for war crimes today.

THE Ugandan government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels are set to halt fighting after a brutal 19-year conflict that left thousands dead, officials said.

The Ugandan government and Lord’s Resistance Army rebels today agreed to a truce to end a brutal 19-year conflict that left thousands dead, officials said.

Ugandan rebel leader Joseph Kony has told journalists that he is committed to negotiating peace after 19 years of war, and denied he has committed war crimes.