The United Nations Mission in South Sudan is receiving hundreds of reinforcements from troop-contributing nations and from other peacekeeping missions around the world, with the latest contingent of 266 reported to have arrived Tuesday.
In a statement, the UN said the 266 additional peacekeepers include two doctors and three nurses. “They will be deployed in Juba at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) protection sites. The arrival of additional battalions is expected in the coming weeks,” read the statement.
UNMISS was already reinforced in January by several Formed Police Units, which were sent to Bentiu, Bor, Malakal and Juba.
The current deployment is pursuant to the UN Security Council resolution 2132, which authorized almost doubling the size of the peacekeeping mission in South Sudan to nearly 14,000 troops and police.
The troop-contributing nations include Nepal, whose government voted in mid January to dispatch 850 soldiers to South Sudan at the request of the UN Headquarters. About 350 of those are coming from an exisiting UN mission, the one in Haiti, while the others are deployed directly from Nepal.
UNMISS has not disclosed a timeline for further deployments, but in early January the UN top official for peacekeeping operations said the 5,500-strong surge could take up to eight weeks to be fully deployed.
File photo: 39 soldiers from the UNMISS Mongolian Batallion arriving to reinforce a base in Bentiu, 30 December 2013 (UNMISS/Anna Adhikari)
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