British peacekeepers arrive in South Sudan

A UN spokesperson says that the first of 379 British troops have arrived in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, to serve in a United Nations peacekeeping mission (Unmiss).
Ariane Quentier, spokesperson for the UN mission in South Sudan, said a five-person advance team landed on Friday while the rest will begin arriving in the coming weeks, joining 11 990 peacekeepers from other nations.
She said the British troops will carry weapons and form an engineering battalion meant to deploy in Bentiu, the capital of war-torn Unity state.
UN figures show that nearly 100 000 civilians shelter at the UN mission’s Bentiu base seeking safety from the country’s two-and-a-half year civil war. About 170 000 civilians live in UN bases around South Sudan.