The Obama Administration has deployed some 150 Marines to a military base in Djibouti, with an eye toward intervention in South Sudan’s growing civil war.

The Marines were a “crisis-response team,” according to officials, and had previously been located in Spain, but were ordered to Djibouti after the wounding of four US troops in weekend evacuations of Americans from South Sudan.

South Sudan blamed the rebels for firing on a US warplane involved in the evacuations, and as rebels take control of oil-rich regions of the fledgling nation, the administration is likely to see growing pressure to intervene on behalf of the government to “protect” foreign investment in those regions.

The conflict follows a failed military coup by troops loyal tol former Vice President Riek Machar, and a split along ethnic lines between the Nuer and the Dinka.