UN mission head in South Sudan to visit Wau on Saturday

The head of the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), Ellen Margrethe Loej, is scheduled to visit Wau, one of the largest cities in the world's youngest country, on Saturday as the mission said the situation there remains volatile, UN spokesman Stephaned Dujarric said here Thursday.

Loej, the UN special representative for South Sudan, will travel to Wau on Saturday to assess the situation, Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here. "She added a call for an end to violence."

Earlier Thursday, heavy mortar shelling and machine gunfire was heard to the south of the UNMISS compound in Wau, prompting an additional 200 to 250 people to flee to the protection area adjacent to the UNMISS base, where an estimated 19,000 internally displaced people continue to shelter, the spokesman said.

"In meetings with local officials yesterday, the UN continued to call on the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) to provide unrestricted access to the Mission and humanitarian actors in order for them to provide physical protection and humanitarian services, and help create the conditions for displaced people to return home," he said.

Renewed fighting in Wau has forced tens of thousands of people to flee.

The civil war in South Sudan broke out in 2013 when President Salva Kiir sacked his deputy Riek Machar barely two years after it seceded from Sudan. Machar has been reappointed as part of a peace deal signed last year. Enditem