South Sudan army battles rebels for key northern town

Warring forces in South Sudan battled on Sunday over a key northern town with both rebels and the army claiming control after the latest peace talks collapsed without progress.
Rebels said militia commander Johnson Olony, a notorious ex-government general accused of recruiting an army of child soldiers, was in “full control” of the ruined town of Malakal, the state capital of Upper Nile, but the army dismissed the claim.
Aid workers in the town confirmed heavy fighting began on Saturday. The town, the gateway to the country’s last remaining major oil fields, has repeatedly changed hands in the 18-month long conflict.
Civil war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings across the country that has split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines.
Meanwhile, the latest effort to bring the rivals to a deal failed in the Kenyan capital Nairobi.