‘Piles of bodies’<\/strong><\/p>\nThe UN’s top humanitarian official in South Sudan, Toby Lanzer, told the BBC’s Focus on Africa programme that he had seen “piles of [the bodies of] people who had been slaughtered” last week.<\/p>\n
He said they all appeared to be civilians.<\/p>\n
Non-Nuer South Sudanese and foreign nationals were singled out and killed, the UN Mission in South Sudan (Unmiss) said.<\/p>\n
Some 200 civilians were reportedly killed at the town’s Kali-Ballee mosque where they had sought shelter.<\/p>\n
At the hospital, Nuer men, women and children, who hid rather than cheer the rebel forces as they entered the town, were also killed, it said.<\/p>\n
The statement also said that hate speech had been broadcast on local radio stations, urging men to rape women from certain communities.<\/p>\n
Many of those killed were Sudanese traders, especially from Darfur, Mr Lanzer said.<\/p>\n
South Sudan analyst James Copnall says they could have been targeted because rebel groups in Darfur are alleged to back President Kiir against the rebels.<\/p>\n
But Brig Koang told the BBC’s Newsday programme: “Our forces are not responsible for killing civilians anywhere in Bentiu.”<\/p>\n
He suggested that government forces and their allies could have been responsible in order to make the conflict appear as though it was “tribal war”.<\/p>\n
Upsurge in fighting<\/strong><\/p>\nBentiu, capital of the oil-rich Unity State, has changed hands several times during the conflict.<\/p>\n
Control of the oilfields is crucial because South Sudan gets about 90% of its revenue from oil.<\/p>\n
A ceasefire was signed in January but there has been a recent upsurge in fighting.<\/p>\n
Last week, the UN said an attack on one of its bases in the central town of Bor in which at least 58 people were killed could constitute a war crime.<\/p>\n
Fighting broke out last year after Mr Kiir accused Mr Machar of plotting to stage a coup.<\/p>\n
Mr Machar, who was sacked as vice-president earlier in 2013, denied the charges but launched a rebellion.<\/p>\n
The UN has about 8,500 peacekeepers in South Sudan, which became the world newest state after seceding from Sudan in 2011<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rebels in South Sudan have denied a UN report that they killed hundreds of civilians after taking control of the oil hub, Bentiu, last week. Brig Lul Ruai Koang told the BBC there was a security vacuum after government forces left the town. The UN said that civilians were\u00a0killed along ethnic lines at a mosque, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":14723,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-14722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-papa-owusu-ankomah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14723"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}