Hundreds of boys in South Sudan have been kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, the United Nations children’s agency says.<\/p>\n
The figure is a big increase from the 89 children reported abducted by Unicef last month.<\/p>\n
Their latest statement blamed a militia group allied to the government.<\/p>\n
South Sudan is in a state of civil war with forces loyal to President Salva Kiir pitted against rebels led by former Vice-President Riek Machar.<\/p>\n
The campaign group Human Rights Watch has accused both sides of using child soldiers.<\/p>\n
Unicef said the boys were abducted by the Shilluk Militia, under the control of Johnson Oloni. The government has previously said it has no control over the group.<\/p>\n
“We fear [the children] are going from the classroom to the front line,” said Unicef’s representative in South Sudan, Jonathan Veitch.<\/p>\n
Witnesses report seeing children as young as 12 carrying guns, according to the UN.<\/p>\n
The seizure of the boys happened in an area known as Wau Shilluk, in oil-rich Upper Nile state.<\/p>\n
The UN believes 12,000 children were used as child soldiers across South Sudan last year.<\/p>\n
About 1.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting in the country and 2.5 million are facing severe food shortages.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hundreds of boys in South Sudan have been kidnapped and forced to become child soldiers, the United Nations children’s agency says. The figure is a big increase from the 89 children reported abducted by Unicef last month. Their latest statement blamed a militia group allied to the government. South Sudan is in a state of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":95381,"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-95380","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\/95380","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\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95380"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95380\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/95381"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}