South Sudan’s army said it had lost control of the flashpoint town of Bor, its first acknowledged reversal in three days of clashes between rival groups of soldiers that have triggered warnings of a slide into civil war. President Salva Kiir earlier said he was ready for dialogue with his sacked vice president Riek Machar, the man he accuses of starting the fighting, which diplomats say has killed up to 500 people, and plotting a coup.
But the United Nations said tensions was still spreading across South Sudan’s remote states as the violence, which first erupted in the capital Juba late on Sunday, moved north to Bor, the site of an ethnic massacre in 1991.
Witnesses and officials said fighting had broken out in two barracks in Bor between troops loyal to Kiir, from South Sudan’s Dinka ethnic group, and Machar, a Nuer, though the reports were sketchy.
