S Sudan army chief’s death makes Kirr’s going tough

JUBA: South Sudan’s army chief died on Friday, the government said, in a development that further complicates the running of President Salva Kiir’s administration amid a four-year-old civil war. General James Ajongo (pictured) died in Cairo after a short illness at the age of 64. He had joined the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in 1983, when it was still a rebel group fighting for independence from Sudan. “It is with a heavy heart that I announce the untimely death of Gen James Ajongo Mawut, SPLA army’s chief of defence force,” government spokesman Michael Makuei Lueth said. South Sudan researcher Alan Boswell said Ajongo’s death was ill-timed for Kiir. “Kiir now has to manage the competing interests within a sidelined military even as he faces ramping external pressure from the Trump administration and increasingly fractious coalition politics in his own government,” he said. — Reuters