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| S Sudan crisis: Bentiu government offensive halted | |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| South Sudan troops trying to recapture the oil hub of Bentiu from rebels have been forced back amid heavy gunfire, a BBC correspondent says. | |
| Government troops advanced towards the town centre over the weekend with an armoured column. | |
| But the BBC's Alastair Leithead, who is in the UN compound on the outskirts, saw a contingent of troops in retreat. | |
| The town has changed hands several times since fighting broke out in South Sudan last December. | |
| Tensions came to a head after President Salva Kiir accused his sacked deputy, Riek Machar, of plotting a coup. | |
| Rebel forces deny UN charges that they killed hundreds of people along ethnic lines after seizing Bentiu in April. | |
| On Friday the US Secretary of State John Kerry said he had secured an agreement from President Kiir and Mr Machar for peace talks to be held in Addis Ababa. | |
| The power struggle between the two men - who fought together in the civil war before South Sudan's independence - has increasingly taken on an ethnic dimension. | |
| Mr Kiir is a member of the country's largest group, the Dinka, while Mr Machar is from the second-biggest, the Nuer. | |
| The UN has about 8,500 peacekeepers in South Sudan, which became the world newest state after seceding from Sudan in 2011. |