South Sudan’s former army chief is being confined to his home for security reasons, the country’s defence minister said on Thursday.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir has no plan to step down for anyone, his spokesman said Wednesday.

South Sudanese soldiers are passing through the territory of neighboring Uganda to launch assaults against rebels, raising the risk of the civil war spilling over into neighboring East African countries, South Sudanese rebels and witnesses said.

The Committee to Protect Journalists has called for an investigation amid claims that an  American reporter killed in South Sudan was deliberately targeted by government troops.

Cases of cholera re-emerged in southern Khartoum state. The disease emerged in El Sareif Beni Hussein and Foro Baranga localities in Darfur for the first time. And in East Jebel Marra, the Health Ministry deployed a medical team to an area where infections have rapidly spread in the past months.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir has pardoned and released a prominent human rights activists who had been jailed since last year on spying and other charges, his family said.