US Marines poised to enter South Sudan

U.S. Marines are poised to enter South Sudan as the U.N. Security Council is to vote Tuesday on doubling the number of U.N. troops in the world's newest nation. The U.N. troops would be used as peacekeepers to help protect tens of thousands of civilians under siege in the landlocked 2-year-old Middle Africa nation, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, while South Sudan president's vowed to storm a key city and town under rebel control. More than 1,000 people are believed killed in a week of fierce ethnic violence, a U.N. official said. The 150 Marines, along with four V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and two C-130 Hercules transport planes, are being sent from Spain to the Horn of Africa country of Djibouti, where an emergency force was created after the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, the U.S. Africa Command said. The Marines and aircraft are being stationed at the U.S. Navy's Camp Lemonnier expeditionary base in case the State Department needs rapid-deployment help in securing U.S. diplomatic facilities or in helping with evacuations, the command said. Some 200 U.S. civilians are believed still in South Sudan, where increasingly intense violence is stoking fears of an all-out civil war in the world's newest country. "By positioning these forces forward, we are able to more quickly respond to crisis in the region, if required," an Africa Command statement said. It cited the Benghazi attack, which killed four people, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, and injured 10 others. "One of the lessons learned from the tragic events in Benghazi was that we needed to be better postured, in order to respond to developing or crisis situations, if needed. These precautionary movements will allow us to do just that," the command statement said. Some 380 U.S. citizens and another 300 people from other countries have been evacuated in recent days, U.S. defense officials said. Washington is also considering cutting off U.S. aid to South Sudan, the Wall Street Journal said. Ban called on the Security Council to send a rapid wave of reinforcements, including attack helicopters and a near doubling of international forces, to South Sudan right away. An urgent Security Council resolution, supported by Washington and expected to be approved Tuesday, would increase the number of U.N. military and police personnel in South Sudan to more than 13,000 from the current 7,600. The troops would be taken from other African peacekeeping missions, such as in Darfur and the Democratic Republic of Congo, which borders South Sudan to the southwest. U.S. and French diplomats said there was widespread council support for increasing the troop levels, the New York Times said. "The leaders of South Sudan face a stark choice," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power told reporters. "They can return to the political dialogue and spirit of cooperation that helped establish South Sudan, or they can destroy those hard-fought gains and tear apart their newborn nation," she said. Power said 100,000 people were displaced by the fighting and 45,000 were sheltered at U.N. compounds across the country. Some of those compounds face "imminent" attack, she said, adding the increased peacekeeping forces were needed to protect them. A political power struggle between former Vice President Riek Machar and President Salva Kiir, who fired Machar in July, set off the wave of violence ahead of 2015 elections. The fighting erupted in the capital Dec. 15 after what Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, described as an attempted coup by forces loyal to Machar, an ethnic Nuer. Machar denies his forces attempted a coup. The fighting ignited a simmering political power struggle in South Sudan's ruling party, and the violence quickly spread to other parts of the country. Kiir told Parliament in the capital, Juba, Monday he was ready to talk with Machar but said he would not comply with Machar's demands his arrested colleagues be released before talks start, the Journal said. Kiir also said his forces were prepared to move on Bor, a key state capital in an oil-production state that rebel forces have held for most of the week, and the town of Akobo, where some 2,000 armed youth militiamen overran a U.N. base holding an estimated 17,000 people, killing at least 11 civilians seeking refuge there and two peacekeepers trying to protect them. U.S. oil giant Chevron Corp. is one of the major developers of oil extraction in the state around Bor. Chevron's petroleum exploration has been stalled by the violence.