UGANDA has deployed an unknown number of troops to South Sudan in a bid to protect the fragile government of President Salva Kiir, it was reported today. 

This comes as a tense rivalry with President Kiir’s deputy threatens a return to civil war in the east African nation.

Ugandan special forces have been deployed to Juba, the South Sudanese capital, “to support the government of South Sudan” against a possible rebel advance on the city, Major General Felix Kulayigye, a spokesperson for the Ugandan military, said today.

He said: “We are not there for peacekeeping.”

In deploying Ugandan soldiers to Juba, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni moved as a guarantor of the peace process that keeps President Kiir and Riek Machar together in a delicate government of national unity, General Kulayigye told reporters today.

The deployment of Ugandan troops to South Sudan underscores rising tensions in the oil-producing country that has been plagued by political instability and violence since it gained independence from Sudan in 2011.

The United Nations is warning of “an alarming regression that could erase years of hard-won progress” in South Sudan.

The latest tensions stem from fighting in the country’s north between government troops and a militia, known as the White Army, that’s widely believed to be allied with Mr Machar.