The incident in the capital, Juba, last July resulted in a UN report which accused UN peacekeepers of failing in their duty to protect civilians.

It happened as rival forces in the civil war clashed in the city.

The soldiers’ lawyer said the allegations were untrue, Reuters news agency reports. The incident happened in a rebel-controlled area, he added.

Peace efforts have failed to bring an end to the three-and-a-half-year-old conflict, which has seen forces loyal to President Salva Kiir fighting troops who back former Vice-President Riek Machar.

The trial concerns an attack on the Terrain Hotel, home to aid workers from a number of international organisations.

Its manager, Mike Woodward, has been giving evidence at the military court in Juba, Reuters reports.

Between 50 and 100 soldiers entered the compound, looted the place and then raped five women, he is quoted as saying.

The defence lawyer says the compound was in a rebel-held part of the city, implying that government troops could not have been responsible.

Some of the victims have given harrowing testimony to the BBC. They spoke of what had happened to them and said their calls for help from the UN had gone unanswered.

A UN investigation backed their claims that peacekeepers had refused to respond when the compound was attacked.

The incident happened during three days of fighting in which at least 73 people were killed, including more than 20 internally displaced people who had sought UN protection. Two peacekeepers also died.

The government has been under pressure to tackle sexual violence against women, which is widespread, BBC South Sudan expert James Copnall says.

The overwhelming majority of victims are South Sudanese, and so far there seems to be little progress made in bringing the perpetrators of those crimes to justice.

In the civil war, tens of thousands of people have died and millions have been displaced.

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The world’s youngest nation has been mired in civil war since 2013, when President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar, sparking a conflict that has increasingly split the country along ethnic lines.

Last month, the United Nations declared that parts of the country are experiencing famine, the first time the world has faced such a catastrophe in six years.

Nearly half the population, or about 5.5 million people, is expected to lack a reliable source of food by July.

Despite the catastrophe, Juba will now charge $10,000 for foreigners working in a “professional” capacity, $2,000 for “blue collar” employees and $1,000 for “casual workers” from March 1, the labour ministry said in a decree.

Edmund Yakani, executive director of the local charity Community Empowerment for Progress Organizations (CEPO), said the move aimed to reduce the number of humanitarian workers.

“Actually, the work permit is too expensive for humanitarian workers, since over 90 percent of the foreigners seeking to work in South Sudan are humanitarian workers”, he told Reuters.

Aid groups say they often face restrictions in South Sudan. In December, Juba expelled the country director of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) after security agents held him without charge for more than 24 hours.

The U.N. defines famine as when at least a fifth of the households in a region face extreme food shortages, acute malnutrition rates exceed 30 percent, and two or more people in every 10,000 are dying each day.

The fighting has uprooted more than 3 million people. Continuing displacement presents “heightened risks of prolonged (food) underproduction into 2018,” the United Nations said in a report last month.

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Fighting between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing the vice president he sacked in July, Riek Machar, erupted in mid-December.

Thousands of people have been killed and more than half a million people have fled their homes, prompting the regional grouping of nations, IGAD, to initiate peace talks.

The pact is expected to be implemented within 24 hours of the signing, mediators said.

But making the ceasefire hold could test Machar, whose forces include loyalists as well as more autonomous groups battling the centrally controlled government forces.

“The crisis that gripped South Sudan is a mere manifestation of the challenges that face the young and fledgling state,” Seyoum Mesfin, IGAD’s chief mediator, told the signing ceremony.

“I believe that the postwar challenges will be greater than the war itself. The process will be … unpredictable and delicate.”

South Sudan’s defense minister, Kuol Manyang Juuk, told Reuters on January 17 before the deal was reached that Machar did not have enough control to make a ceasefire stick in the oil-producing nation, one of Africa’s poorest.

“To the parties, we say: Enough! The killing must end now. The displaced must be able to return to their homes,” said Alexander Rondos, the European Union’s special representative for the Horn of Africa, at the signing event.

The conflict has turned along ethnic faultlines, pitting Machar’s Nuer against Kiir’s Dinka people. Several other communities have also taken up weapons. Analysts say the ceasefire does not resolve the broader power struggle.

“It is only the first step to allow space and time for a more substantive political dialogue to take place,” said Douglas Johnson, a historian and author.

Both sides had said several times since talks began at the start of January they were close to a deal, but disagreements had pushed back a signing. Meanwhile, fighting raged, with the government retaking major towns from rebel forces.

“This deal does not provide answers to South Sudan’s current problems. We need a comprehensive political deal,” said one rebel official in the Ethiopian capital.

“We are only signing because we, and they, are under pressure.”

Ordinary people in South Sudan’s capital Juba were also skeptical the ceasefire would swiftly end the political rivalry that underpinned the fighting.

“It can solve some of the immediate problems but not all the problems,” said 31-year-old Samuel Kuir Chok. “I’m not optimistic … because this guy (Machar) wants to be president at all costs.”

The ceasefire was accompanied by an agreement on the “question of detainees”. Rebels had demanded the release of 11 of Machar’s allies, detained by the government and accused of attempting a coup.

Seyoum, the chief mediator, told reporters the deal provided for the 11 to eventually participate in the peace process – but that they must first face due process of law.

Shortly before the signing, rebel spokesman Mabior Garang said freeing the detainees was “not so much of a demand since everyone recognizes the need for their release”.

The rebels have also demanded that Uganda, which openly admitted to helping Kiir’s forces in combat, leave South Sudan.

Diplomats at the talks had said the deal would call for an end to “involvement by foreign forces”, but Hussein Mar Nyot, the spokesman for Machar’s delegation, said it called for a ‘withdrawal of allied forces invited by both sides'”.

South Sudan won its independence from Sudan in 2011 after decades of conflict between the northern and southern Sudanese.

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A BBC correspondent with government troops said a convoy advancing on Bor came under heavy fire in an ambush.

The fighting is continuing as the warring parties meet in Ethiopia to try to agree a ceasefire. Substantive talks appear to have been once again delayed.

The conflict pits supporters of President Salva Kiir against rebels led by his sacked deputy Riek Machar.

It began on 15 December after the president accused Mr Machar of attempting a coup – which he denies.

At least 1,000 people have been killed and nearly 200,000 displaced in the conflict, which has taken on ethnic undertones. Mr Kiir is from the Dinka community and Machar from the Nuer group.

The BBC’s Alastair Leithead was travelling with government troops from the capital, Juba, on Sunday when the convoy came under attack about 25km (15 miles) from Bor.

The commanding general – who has not been named – was killed in the ambush.

The government has been sending reinforcements to try to retake Bor in recent days, bringing the total number of army troops involved to some 2,000.

A whole division of the South Sudanese army has joined the rebel side, so the fighting in Bor in effect involves two trained armies, our correspondent adds.

He says he saw evidence of the intensity of the fighting, with burnt-out tanks by the side of the road.

Fighting is also continuing in other areas. Army spokesman Philip Aguer said there had been clashes in the oil-producing states of Unity and Upper Nile in the north.

Up until Friday, the talks in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, were conducted by mediators. Now, teams representing the opposing factions are expected to negotiate face-to-face.

A preliminary meeting was held late on Saturday. Key issues are establishing a ceasefire, and the rebels’ demand for the release of what they see as political prisoners.

But substantive talks failed to get under way on Sunday, delayed by disagreements over the agenda and – an official was quoted as saying – by “protocol issues”.

It is now hoped talks will begin on Monday.

South Sudan spokesman Michael Makuei said the government would resist international pressure to free supporters of Machar arrested in Juba at the start of the conflict.

He said releasing “those who attempted to overthrow a democratically elected government” would set a “bad precedent”.

“Are we not risking the governments of Africa and the rest of the world to such attempts? We should not be arm-twisted because we are a new nation.”

Meanwhile the first aid flight to South Sudan funded by the UK government has arrived in the country. The aircraft, carrying emergency aid and sanitation supplies, landed in Juba, on Sunday.

South Sudan is the world’s newest state. It was formed in 2011, gaining independence from Sudan after decades of conflict.

The latest trouble has its roots in tensions that go back long before 2011

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Nearly a week of fighting in South Sudan threatens to drag the world’s newest country into a Dinka-Nuer ethnic civil war just two years after it won independence from Sudan with strong support from successive U.S. administrations.

The US aircraft came under fire while approaching the evacuation site, the military’s Africa Command said in a statement. “The aircraft diverted to an airfield outside the country and aborted the mission,” it added.

The statement said all of the three Osprey CV-22 aircraft involved in the mission had been damaged.

Consequently, US President Barack Obama warned that any move to take power by military means would lead to an end of U.S. and international community support for South Sudan.

The United Nations mission in South Sudan said one of four U.N. helicopters sent to Youai, in Jonglei state, had come under small-arms fire on Friday. No crew or passengers were harmed.

Hundreds of people have been killed in the fighting between Dinka loyalists of President Salva Kiir and Nuer supporters of former Vice-President Riek Machar, who was sacked in July and is accused by the government of trying to seize power.

Fighting has spread from the capital, Juba, to vital oilfields and the government said a senior army commander had defected to Machar in the oil-producing Unity State.

The German military said on Saturday it had evacuated 98 people, including Germans and other nationals, from South Sudan by air to neighboring Uganda. The German ambassador to South Sudan was among them, the Foreign Ministry in Berlin said.

A separate plane took Lieutenant-General Hans-Werner Fritz, chief of Germany’s Operations Command, along with his aides and five other Germans, to Berlin, the military said.

After meeting African mediators on Friday, Kiir’s government said on its Twitter feed that it was willing to hold talks with any rebel group. The United States is sending an envoy to help find a negotiated solution.

South Sudan’s foreign minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, told Reuters the government had given African mediators the go-ahead to meet Kiir’s rivals, including Machar and his allies.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom, who led an East African delegation of foreign ministers in Juba aimed at mediating between the feuding sides, said the team did not manage to meet Riek Machar face to face, neither did they make phone contact.

“We are trying to contact them. We are hopeful of having both sides on the negotiating table within the space of 10 days,” Tedros told Reuters.

In their meeting with Kiir, Tedros said they were also aiming to get humanitarian aid to afflicted populations unhindered.

Benjamin said Lieutenant-General Lazarus Sumbeiywo, sent to South Sudan by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta, had stayed behind along with a Kenyan diplomat after the African mediators left on Saturday and would work on making contact with Machar.

Sumbeiywo was the chief mediator in the talks that led to the signing of the 2005 peace agreements with north Sudan.

“So on the side of the government … we have established dialogue without any condition,” Benjamin said. “All we say, we urge former Vice-President Riek Machar not to incite the people of South Sudan through ethnic configuration.”

United Nations staff say hundreds of people have been killed across the country, which is the size of France, this week and that 40,000 civilians are sheltering at U.N. bases.

The United Nations said on Friday at least 11 Dinka civilians had been killed during an attack by about 2,000 armed youths from another ethnic group on a U.N. peacekeeping base in Jonglei state. Two Indian peacekeepers were also killed.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the attack and called on Kiir and Machar “to come to the table and find a political way out of this crisis”.

“They’re responsible to the people of South Sudan to end the crisis and find a political means of resolving their differences,” Ban told a news conference in the Philippines.

The African Union called on Saturday for a Christmas ceasefire, and its chairwoman Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma described the killings of civilians and U.N. peacekeepers as a war crime.

Reuters television footage showed several hundred government troops leaving Juba to deploy in Jonglei state.

Toby Lanzer, the U.N. Humanitarian Coordinator in South Sudan, said via Twitter that Bor, in Jonglei state, remained tense. “We’ve heard clashes & seen bodies in the streets. Civilians have left town to flee for their safety,” he wrote.

Information Minister Michael Makuei told Reuters an army divisional commander in Unity State, John Koang, had defected and joined Machar, who had named him the governor of the state.

Jacob Dut, a political science lecturer at the University of Juba, said most army divisions had between 10,000 and 13,000 troops, although not all were fully manned.

“Division 4 (Koang’s unit) is adjacent to the border with Sudan. That means there is more military hardware and that means that this defection is a big loss,” Dut said.

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