The prevalence of sexual violence has reached "epic proportions" in South Sudan during its civil war, the UN Commission on Human Rights said.

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.

A Russian-built cargo plane with passengers on board crashed after taking off from the airport in South Sudan’s capital Juba, killing dozens of people, witnesses said.

At least 85 people were killed in South Sudan when a crowd tried to gather fuel from an oil tanker that had veered off the road on its way to a region west of the capital Juba, a presidential spokesman said.

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.

At least 129 children were killed, with boys castrated and girls raped and some victims thrown to their deaths into burning buildings, during a government offensive against rebels last month in South Sudan, according to the UN children’s agency.

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

Alex Perry on how George Clooney and his celebrity friends helped engineer the birth of a new African country and then saw it implode

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.

Her sisters are famed for cooking and TV, but Ettie Higgins is back in Syria, a nation in a perpetual chaos, says Noel Baker

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

Leaders for warring sides in South Sudan’s month-long internal conflict have said they are close to signing a cease-fire.

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.

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.

South Sudan and Sudan have failed to reach an agreement on security arrangements and oil exports after several days of talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, officials said today.

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton has urged leaders of South Sudan and their counterparts in the north to quickly reach agreement on oil revenue and other pressing issues to resolve differences that threaten to reignite a decades-long conflict.

African Union mediator Thabo Mbeki urged the UN Security Council to take action to stop the fighting between Sudan and South Sudan, warning that both sides are locked in a "logic of war" with hardliners increasingly in control.

Aid groups are mounting a “major emergency operation” in rural South Sudan after tribe-on-tribe violence sent tens of thousands fleeing and killed an unknown number of people, the United Nations said.

Al Qaida-linked militants in Somalia vowed to keep most international aid workers away despite a worsening famine, as the United Nations warned that 800,000 children could die from starvation.

An al-Qaida-linked militant group has said it will not allow banned aid organisations to return to southern Somalia, meaning only a handful of agencies will be able to respond to the worsening famine.

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.

More than 80 people were killed when rebels attacked cattle herders in Southern Sudan, while hundreds marched in the southern capital to protest at the unresolved status of a volatile border hotspot.

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.

SOUTHERN Sudan’s referendum commission said yesterday that more than 99% of voters in the south opted to secede from the country’s north in a vote held earlier this month.

HOLLYWOOD heartthrob and rights activist George Clooney contracted malaria during his recent visit to Sudan for voting there and had a “bad 10 days”, he said.

Actor George Clooney will tonight tell TV viewers of his battles with malaria and his humanitarian work in Africa.

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

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.