I N T E R N AT I O N A LTHURSDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2013

JUBA: South Sudan’s fugitive for-mer vice president denied yester-day accusations he led a coup bidagainst his archrival President SalvaKiir after days of fierce fighting thathas killed hundreds of people andsent thousands fleeing to UN bases.

The deadly unrest in the capitalJuba has alarmed the internationalcommunity and sparked fears of areturn to civil war in the world’syoungest nation. Kiir on Mondayaccused soldiers loyal to his arch-rival, former vice president RiekMachar, of staging a coup attemptin the oil-rich but deeply impover-

ished nation, which has struggledwith instability since becomingindependent in 2011.

But in comments publishedWednesday, Machar denied anyattempt to topple the president,and instead accused Kiir of usingthe violence as a pretext to purgeany challengers. “What took placein Juba was a misunderstandingbetween presidential guards withintheir division, it was not a coupattempt,” he told the Paris-based

Sudan Tribune website in his firstpublic remarks since the fightingerupted.

“Kiir wanted to use the allegedcoup attempt in order to get rid ofus,” said Machar, who was sacked bythe president in July. The govern-ment said 10 key figures, many ofthem former ministers, have beenarrested in the crackdown, and thatothers, including Machar, were onthe run.

Amid fears that South Sudancould descend into wider ethnicviolence, the United States orderednon-essential embassy staff out of

the country. The fighting has high-lighted the bitter fault lines in thecountry, which is awash with gunsafter decades of war.In Juba, gun-fire rang out into the early hours ofyesterday, an AFP reporter said, butwithout the same intensity as thetwo previous nights. “It was the qui-etest night we’ve had in Juba sincethe crisis began on Sundayevening,” Joe Contreras, aspokesman for the UN Mission inSouth Sudan (UNMISS)told AFP.

By midday life on the streets ofJuba showed signs of returning tonormal. Juba airport reopened andseveral regional airlines resumedflights, although others said theywere waiting for additional securityguarantees. Dozens of foreign aidworkers and expatriates said onTwitter they were waiting at the air-port to board the first flight theycould out of the country.

Many of Juba’s residents havespent the past two days barricadedin their homes, too afraid to move.Others used lulls in the sporadicand often intense battles to grab

what belongings they could andflee to safer areas, including UNbases.

Situation ‘extremely tense’UN peacekeeping chief Herve

Ladsous told the Security Councilthat between 400-500 bodies hadbeen taken to hospitals in Juba,while another 800 people had beenwounded. Ladsous told the councilit appeared the clashes that erupt-ed in the “extremely tense” capital

late Sunday were on ethnic lines.Kiir and his rival Machar hail

from different ethnic groups andfought on different sides duringSudan’s civil war. The InternationalCommittee of the Red Cross (ICRC)said medical teams in Juba’s twomain hospitals were having troublecoping.

“Staff in both hospitals havebeen working around the clock, butthey are struggling because of thesheer volume of patients and theseverity of the injuries,” said FelicityGapes, an ICRC delegate leadingthe medical response on theground. “There is a heavy toll, it isobvious,” Security Council presidentGerard Araud told reporters at theUN, adding that precise figureswere not yet available.

“There are dozens and scores ofcasualties,” France’s UN ambassadorsaid. Araud added that fighting hadalso been reported in Jonglei, oneof the most troubled states in thecountry and with a bitter history ofclashes between rival ethnicgroups. UN peacekeepers said hun-dreds of civilians had sought refugeat two of their bases in Jonglei, inthe state capital Bor and the east-ern town of Pibor. Fighting wasreported overnight Tuesday in Bor,with shooting breaking out againin the early hours of yesterday.

“Hundreds of civilians have beenstreaming into our camp on theoutskirts of the town, they’re nowover the 1,000 mark, and Bor is verytense,” Contreras said. Ladsous toldthe Security Council that between15,000 and 20,000 people hadsought UN protection in Juba.

The special representative of theUN secretar y-general, Hi ldeJohnson, said it was “paramount”that the conflict did not assumeethnic dimensions. The US StateDepartment issued a statementsaying all non-emergency US gov-ernment personnel have beenordered to leave “because ofongoing polit ical and socialunrest ” and also urged al lAmericans to get out of the coun-try “immediately”. — AFP

Hundreds dead in S Sudan

fighting as coup bid deniedFears of a return to civil war

JUBA: People arrive to seek refuge in the UNMISS compound in Juba, yesterday. The mission is stepping upprovision of basic health facilities. South Sudan’s fugitive former vice president denied accusations he leda coup bid against his archrival President Salva Kiir after days of fierce fighting that has killed hundreds ofpeople and sent thousands fleeing to UN bases. — AFP

GAZA CITY: Leading Palestinian humanrights campaigner Dr Eyad Sarraj, whodealt with the mental health damagecaused by political oppression and chal-lenged both Israeli and Palestinian abus-es, died after battling leukemia, his fami-ly said yesterday. He was 69.

Trained in Egypt and Britain, Sarrajbecame the Gaza Strip’s first psychiatristand established a community mentalhealth program in 1990. The programfocused on the most vulnerable groups,such as children and victims of tortureand other abuses, and served as a foun-dation for his human rights work.

Sarraj spoke extensively about the tollon mental health exacted by Israel’s ruleover the Palestinians. Israeli occupation,he wrote in 1997, has left the Palestinians“exhausted, tormented and brutalized.”

He was briefly jailed in the 1980s byIsrael, which occupied Gaza from 1967until 2005, and in the 1990s by thePalestinian Authority, a self-rule govern-ment then led by Yasser Arafat, accordingto his biography.

Sarraj later served as chairman of thePalestinian Independent Commission forCitizens’ Rights, taking on a role ofombudsman for ordinary Palestinians.

In recent years, he and other politicalindependents worked at reconciling rivalPalestinian political camps - the Islamic

militant Hamas which has ruled Gazasince a violent 2007 takeover andWestern-backed Palestinian PresidentMahmoud Abbas, who administers partsof the West Bank.

After Israel’s military offensive againstGaza in the winter of 2008-2009, Sarrajtold United Nations investigators thatpost-traumatic stress disorders are wide-spread among Gaza’s children, accordingto his biography.

Sarraj won greater recognition abroadthan at home. He received the MartinEnnals Award for human rights defend-ers in 1998 and the Olof Palme Prizeawarded by Sweden’s labor movement in2010.

Sarraj was born in the town ofBeersheba in British-ruled Palestine in1944, and fled with his family to Gazaduring the 1948 war over Israel’s cre-ation. He studied medicine in Alexandria,Egypt, and earned a degree in psychiatryin Britain.

In recent years, Sarraj had been bat-tling leukemia, according to his brother,Hakim. Sarraj died late Tuesday atHadassah Hospital in Jerusalem wherehe had been undergoing treatment formore than a month, his brother said.Sarraj is survived by his wife, NirmeenKharma, and three sons. Funeral arrange-ments are pending. —AP

Top Palestinian human

rights campaigner dies

GAZA: Gaza psychiatrist and prominent Palestinian human rights campaigner Dr.Eyad Sarraj, left, listens to Jewish-American scholar and activist Noam Chomsky,right. Relatives say Sarraj has died after a long battle with leukemia. He was 69. — AP

ANKARA: Istanbul police leading amajor corruption and bribery investi-gation targeting allies of PrimeMinister Recep Tayyip Erdogan haveseized shoe boxes stashed with $4.5million at the home of a state-ownedbank’s chief executive, a Turkish newsagency reported yesterday.

Dozens of people, including thebank’s CEO and the sons of three keygovernment ministers, were detainedTuesday for questioning in raids aspart of the investigation which threat-ens to rock Erdogan’s 11-year tenure.

The state-run Anadolu Agency saidmore than 50 people were in policecustody as part of the investigation.Other reports said as many as 84 peo-ple were detained. Many believe thepolice operation is the fallout of adeepening rift between Erdogan’sgovernment and a powerful U.S.-based moderate Islamic cleric,Fethullah Gulen, whose followers arereported to have a strong footholdwithin Turkey’s police and judiciary.

Police searching the home of HalkBank’s CEO, Suleyman Aslan, discov-ered the shoe boxes containing mon-ey on his bookshelves, the Dogannews agency reported. It said Aslan’swife, who was also detained, washeard in a wiretapped telephone con-versation as saying “the greens havearrived,’ allegedly in reference to dollarbills. Dogan, a reliable news source,cited unidentified judicial officials forits report. A national police officialsaid he could not immediately con-firm the report, while officials at theInterior Ministry refused comment.Halk Bank said police had requestedinformation concerning their investi-gation but had no other comment onthe case.

Analysts say the investigation isthe latest round of a power strugglebetween Gulen and Erdogan’s govern-

ment. The cleric’s movement longsupported Erdogan’s Islamic-basedJustice and Development Party buthas fallen out with the Turkish leaderover his plans to close down privatecram schools that are a major sourceof income for his group.

In a sign that Erdogan was fightingback against the probe, five seniorpolice officials were removed fromduty yesterday, Turkish media reportssaid. They included commissioners incharge of combatting organizedcrime, smuggling and criminal finan-cial activity and oversaw the corrup-tion detentions, according to Dogan.Erdogan has suggested that theprobe is a politically motivated “dirtytrap” to harm his government. Theinvestigation comes ahead of localelections in March that are largely

seen as a vote of confidence inErdogan’s government. Erdogan him-self is expected to be a candidate inthe presidential election in August.

Turkey’s financial markets havebeen turbulent since Tuesday’s raids,with the markets sliding and theTurkish Lira drifting downwardagainst the dollar. Police confirmed toThe Associated Press that the sons ofthree government ministers havebeen held for questioning: EconomyMinister Zafer Caglayan, InteriorMinister Muammer Guler andEnvironment and Urban PlanningMinister Erdogan Bayraktar.

Opposition parties have demand-ed that the three ministers resign andcriticized the dismissal of the fivepolice chiefs, calling it an attempt tocover up the scandal. — AP

$4.5 million seized from

Turkey bank chief’s home

ISTANBUL: People arrested as part of a probe into alleged corruption arriveat the hospital for a medical check-up at the start of their custody inIstanbul yesterday. Turkish police detained more than 20 people includingthe sons of three cabinet ministers and several high-profile businessmen ina probe into alleged bribery and corruption, local media reported.— AFP

Iran nuclear talks to resumeVIENNA: Talks between experts fromIran and world powers on implement-ing last month’s nuclear deal willresume on Thursday in Geneva, aspokeswoman for EU foreign policychief Catherine Ashton said yesterday.“The technical talks will be resumedtomorrow and continue until tomor-row” in Geneva, Nabila Massrali toldAFP via email. The experts held fourdays of talks in Vienna last week butthe Iranians walked out afterWashington expanded its sanctionsblacklist against Tehran. Under a land-

mark November 24 deal struck inGeneva, Iran agreed to roll back partsof its nuclear programme for sixmonths in exchange for modest sanc-tions relief and a promise not toimpose new sanctions. But the UnitedStates last week put a dozen overseascompanies on a blacklist for evadingits sanctions, angering Tehran eventhough Washington said the newmeasures did not constitute new sanc-tions.

But Tehran said the measures were“against the spirit” of the November 24

deal. Foreign Minister MohammadJavad Zarif expressed Iran’s “discon-tent” in a phone call with US Secretaryof State John Kerry, Iranian newsagency Fars reported on Monday. TheState Department confirmed the calltook place. During the six-monthnuclear freeze, which has not startedyet, Iran and the powers aim to ham-mer out a long-term comprehensiveaccord to end once and for all thestandoff over Iran’s nuclear pro-gramme after a decade of failedattempts and rising tensions.—AFP