Red Cross halts aid to parts of South Sudan after staff member killed

The Red Cross has halted operations across a third of South Sudan after gunmen shot dead a staff member, in what the UN said on Wednesday was the biggest such suspension during the country's four-year civil war.

Kennedy Laki Emmanuel, a driver for the Red Cross, died on September 8 when gunmen fired on a 10-vehicle convoy delivering aid in South Sudan's restive Western Equatoria state.

In response, the International Committee of the Red Cross shut down activities across Equatoria, a region roughly the size of Britain that borders Congo and Uganda and has seen some of the heaviest fighting over the last year.

The suspension affected more than 22,000 people about to get aid deliveries from the Red Cross. That included more than 5,000 farmers due to receive seeds in an area teetering on the edge of famine.

"The ICRC will not resume anything until we have a clear picture of exactly what happened and until we receive the necessary security guarantees," spokeswoman Mari Mortvedt said. "The security of the ICRC staff is top priority."

The UN's Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that no aid group had shut down its operations over such a large area since South Sudan's civil war began in 2013.

At least 85 aid workers have been killed, according to the UN, including 18 this year, making it the deadliest country for aid workers in the world.

That number included a staff member for aid group World Vision aid group, killed in the Western Equatoria town of Yambio on September 3. 

US says more pressure needed

African countries should do more to pile pressure on South Sudan's political leaders, who seem incapable of resolving the country's four-year civil war, a top US diplomat said on Wednesday.

"We think there is more our African colleagues can and should be doing at this point, especially in terms of focusing on leadership, that from our point of view is behaving in a way that is very irresponsible," Tom Shannon, US under secretary for political affairs at the State Department, told reporters.

Shannon, speaking on the sidelines of a US-African Partnerships event at the US Institute of Peace, said Washington had grown "intolerant" of South Sudan's leaders and the challenge was to work with African countries which are interested in seeing an end to the conflict.

"This is a man-made conflict of horrific dimensions, which is about political leaders measuring each other through force at the cost of their populations," said Shannon.

US sanctions imposed

The Trump administration last week imposed sanctions on two senior South Sudanese officials and the former army chief for their role in the conflict, atrocities against civilians and attacks against international missions in South Sudan.

South Sudan became the world's newest nation when it gained independence from Sudan in 2011. War broke out in late 2013 after President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, fired his deputy Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer. 

The UN says ethnic cleansing has taken place and warned of genocide, amid reports of murder, rape, and torture of civilians.

More than two million South Sudanese have now fled the country, creating Africa's biggest refugee crisis since the 1994 Rwandan genocide, and more than half of those remaining need food aid. The country's original population was 12 million.

A confidential report by the United Nations last week said competing efforts to end South Sudan's civil war were allowing Kiir's government to exploit divisions among the international brokers.