Rebel slaughter in South Sudan

22 April 2014 - 09:39 By AFP
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Rebel gunmen in South Sudan massacred "hundreds" of civilians when they captured the oil town of Bentiu last week, the UN said yesterday.

In the town's main mosque alone, "more than 200 civilians were reportedly killed and over 400 wounded", the UN mission in the country said. There were also massacres at a church, a hospital and an abandoned UN World Food Programme compound.

South Sudan's army has been fighting rebels loyal to sacked vice-president Riek Machar, who launched a renewed offensive this month targeting oil fields.

The conflict has taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting President Salva Kiir's Dinka tribe against militias made up of Machar's Nuer people.

UN human rights investigators said that, after rebels wrested Bentiu from government forces in heavy battles on Tuesday last week, the gunmen spent two days hunting down those they believed opposed them.

Both South Sudanese and Sudanese - some from the war-torn Darfur region - were killed, the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan said.

"They [the rebels] searched a number of places where hundreds of South Sudanese and foreign civilians had taken refuge, and killed hundreds of the civilians after determining their ethnicity or nationality," the UN said.

Some rebels took to the local radio to "broadcast hate messages declaring that certain ethnic groups should not stay in Bentiu, and even calling on men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community".

Rebel spokesman Lul Ruai Koang praised the "gallant forces" for completing "mopping and cleaning-up operations in and around Bentiu".

Two days after the capture of Bentiu gunmen stormed a UN compound and killed at least 58 people. UN peacekeepers fought back to protect over 5000 civilians sheltering in the compound.

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