South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir, this week ordered a series of high-level arrests and dismissals of political and army figures as tensions between him and Vice President Riek Machar – a main opposition figure – threaten to reach boiling point.

Since Tuesday, soldiers of the South Sudanese army have surrounded Machar’s home in Juba, according to members of the vice president’s party, the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement in Opposition (SPLM/IO). Kiir heads the ruling Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).

Fighting between the two exploded into a civil war that rocked the young country beginning in 2013. Although calm returned after a peace deal in 2018, analysts said that agreement is now under threat from renewed tensions between Kiir and Machar. That hostility follows an eruption of violence in the northeastern state of Upper Nile thought to be over rumours of a planned forced disarmament of local groups.