South Sudan opposition leader Riek Machar denies coup

Juba, South Sudan: Fugitive South Sudanese opposition leader Riek Machar has denied government allegations that he tried to stage a coup at the weekend.

In a BBC interview, he denied any link with fighting that began on Sunday.

Mr Machar, a former vice-president, accused President Salva Kiir of "inciting tribal and ethnic violence" to cover his own failings.

The UN has said the fighting has claimed hundreds of lives, and warned that it could descend into a civil war.

Mr Machar, who fell out with President Kiir in July, told the BBC on Wednesday: "There was no attempted coup."

He blamed Sunday's fighting on a conflict between members of the presidential guard, and said it spread across parts of the capital, Juba.

He added that government troops used the incident to arrest some of his supporters on Monday, and that he himself escaped.

"Someone wanted to frame me," he said. "I had to flee. They are hunting me down."

President Kiir has said a group of soldiers supporting Mr Machar had tried to take power by force on Sunday night, but were defeated.

Details of the fighting have been sketchy, but a meeting of the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday was told that the clashes were "apparently largely along ethnic lines".

French UN ambassador Gerard Araud, who holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council, said up to 20,000 people had taken refuge in the UN mission in Juba.

-BBC