His party, Vice President Rick Maher, says the house arrested

His party says that the first vice president of South Sudan, Rick Mashr, a long -term competitor to the country’s President Salva Kiir, was placed under the arrest of the house.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in the opposition (SLM/IO) said that an armed convoy led by senior security officials, including the Minister of Defense, entered the capital, Juba, and removed his personal guards late on Wednesday.

“Technically, Dr. Machar is under house arrest, but security officials initially tried to take it away,” said Rayith Mouach Tang, head of the party’s external relations committee.

The government has not yet attached.

The United Nations has warned that South Sudan is about to return to the civil war after the escalation of the conflict between Machar and the president who was built weeks ago.

In August 2018, the two leaders agreed to end a five -year civil war that killed about 400,000 people.

But over the past seven years, their relationship has become increasingly tense amid ethnic tensions and intermittent violence.

Splm/IO said that Machar was detained alongside his wife, Angelina Tini, who is also the country’s interior minister.

“An arrest warrant was delivered to him under unclear charges,” Tang said in a statement.

He added: “The arrest of the first vice president without the legal procedures undermines the law of the law and threatens the stability of the nation.”

The mission of the United Nations in South Sudan has warned that the most recent country in the world has occurred to losing the “gains made by cracks during the past seven years” if it returns to a “state of war”, in the wake of reports of the arrest of Machar.

“Tonight, the leaders of the country stand on the brink of the relapse to a large -scale conflict,” the task He said in a statement Wednesday.

He added that the violations of the 2018 peace agreement “will not only destroy South Sudan, but also affect the entire region.”

British and American embassies reduced their diplomatic employees and urged their citizens to leave the country, while the Norwegian and German embassies closed their operations in Juba.

Rising tensions come amid renewable clashes between the forces loyal to the competitors in the northern town of Nasser in the oil -rich state of Nile.