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.

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.

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.

Sudan has continued its bombing of South Sudan, as South Sudan’s president said the attacks amounted to a declaration of war.

Sudanese planes bombarded a disputed oil town near South Sudan's border, a southern military official said, and a doctor said bombs aimed at strategic sites in the south's Unity State killed five people.

South Sudan's president has today vowed that the nation will not withdraw its troops that this week entered a disputed border region with Sudan.

South Sudan raised the flag of its new nation for the first time today, as thousands of South Sudanese citizens and dozens of international dignitaries swarmed the new country capital of Juba to celebrate the country’s birth.

South Sudan became the world’s newest nation today, after two civil wars over five decades that cost the lives of millions.

SUDAN’S flashpoint Abyei area is a “Northern town,” the North’s occupying army has said, dismissing southern and international calls yesterday to pull troops out after days of fighting there.

A TOP militia chief has surrendered in south Sudan after clashes that killed more than 160 people, the army said yesterday, as the soon-to-be independent nation reels from a string of bloody battles.

THE dateline here says “Sudan”, but in a few weeks it will likely read “South Sudan” or “Cushitia” or “Azania”.

Women broke out in song and men wrapped themselves in flags as voters in Southern Sudan began casting ballots today in a week-long independence referendum likely to create the world’s newest nation about five years after the end of a brutal civil war.

Two rebel groups clashed with Southern Sudan’s military ahead of the region’s independence referendum, resulting in at least nine deaths, and a top security chief said today that he suspected the groups were trying to depress voter turnout.

The United Nations is preparing for the possibility of 2.8 million people being displaced if fighting breaks out over southern Sudan’s independence referendum, according to an internal report.

SUDAN’S president has lashed out at the US and Britain, saying Washington’s plans to create a “new Middle East” were behind an international push to replace African Union peacekeepers with United Nations troops in war-torn Darfur.

SUDAN’S president has lashed out at the US and Britain, saying Washington’s plans to create a “new Middle East” were behind an international push to replace African Union peacekeepers with United Nations troops in war-torn Darfur.

Southern leader Salva Kiir Mayardit was sworn in as Sudan’s first vice president today, replacing his former boss John Garang, who died in a helicopter crash on July 30.

AT least 130 people have been killed and about 350 wounded in Sudan in three days of violence after the death of former rebel leader and first Vice-President John Garang, the Sudanese Red Crescent said yesterday.