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South Sudan mass graves discovered, UN says South Sudan: three mass graves discovered, UN says
(about 4 hours later)
A mass grave containing 75 bodies has been found in South Sudan's Unity State and two other mass graves have been reported in the capital, Juba, after ethnic violence, the United Nations said on Tuesday. The United Nations said on Tuesday that it had found three mass grave sites in two different parts of South Sudan, while a senior official said the death toll in the country's emerging civil war had run "into the thousands".
Word of the mass grave came as South Sudan undertook military operations to wrest back control of the city of Bor from rebels loyal to the country's former vice president. The military said armed elements have entered a UN refugee camp in Bor that holds about 17,000 civilians. UN human rights investigators, who have faced some criticism in South Sudan at their inactivity since the crisis began on 15 December, said they had identified sites in a rebel-held northern state and in the capital, Juba.
The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called on both sides to protect civilians and warned that political and military leaders could be held to account for crimes. In New York the UN Security Council was due to vote on a new mandate to boost its peacekeeping force from about 7,000 to 12,500 following a call by secretary general Ban Ki-moon. Meanwhile forces loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, claimed they had retaken Bor, a strategically important town in the vast Jonglei state that was among the first to fall under rebel control last week.
"Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days," Pillay said in a statement. "We have discovered a mass grave in Bentiu, in Unity State, and there are reportedly at least two other mass graves in Juba." The reports of mass graves strengthen fears that the death toll in the conflict will grow. UN officials said 14 bodies were found in a single grave in Bentiu, capital of Unity State, and 20 more on a riverbank nearby. Earlier in the day the UN in Geneva had said that 75 bodies had been found but this was later revised to 34, with 75 feared missing and presumed dead.
Responding to the discovery, the government minister of information, Michael Makuei Lueth, said: "Of course Bentiu is under the control of the rebel leader Riek Machar, so we have nothing to do with that area." A UN spokeswoman said that the victims appeared to be soldiers from the Sudan Peoples' Liberation army, the national military. They were reportedly ethnic Dinka, the tribe of President Kiir. South Sudan's minister of information, Michael Makuei Lueth, said Bentiu was under the control of rebels loyal to the country's former vice president, Riek Machar, who is Nuer.
Both South Sudan's president, Salva Kiir, and Machar, his former deputy, have indicated they are ready to talk to try to end a deepening conflict that has killed hundreds of people since it erupted this month. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, called on both sides to protect civilians and warned that political and military leaders could be held to account for crimes. "Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days," Pillay said in a statement. "We have discovered a mass grave in Bentiu, in Unity State, and there are reportedly at least two other mass graves in Juba."
South Sudanese troops are advancing on Bor in order to take it back from troops loyal to Machar, said military spokesman Col Philip Aguer. Troops will also soon advance on another rebel-held city, Bentiu, in the oil-rich region of Unity state, he said. The violence began after a fight between Dinka and Nuer soldiers in the presidential guard on 15 December, igniting a simmering political power struggle in South Sudan's ruling party and sparking widespread ethnic killings. UN officials said the death toll has risen above 1,000.
"We have already started in Bor," Lueth said. On Monday, the Guardian uncovered details of a massacre in a police station in Juba where more than 240 people were allegedly killed. Aid workers admit in private that the real toll could stretch to the "tens of thousands" but firm numbers are not available while heavy fighting continues in several areas.
Western powers and east African states, anxious to prevent the fighting from destabilising a particularly fragile region, have tried to mediate between Machar, who hails from the Nuer tribe, and Kiir, a Dinka. "I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that we're into the thousands," said the UN's chief of humanitarian affairs, Toby Lanzer.
Spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said that the bodies of 75 soldiers of the Sudan People's Liberation Army were believed to be in the mass grave in Bentiu visited by UN officers. With rival militias and army factions on the march, as well as reports of targeted killings in government and rebel controlled areas an estimated 50,000 civilians are now hiding in five UN bases across the two-and-a-half-year-old nation. Some 24,000 civilians have gathered in the bush in Lakes States, aid workers said. Tens of thousands more have sought sanctuary in churches, including 5,000 in a single Catholic Church in the capital.
"They are reportedly all of Dinka ethnicity," Shamdasani told Reuters in Geneva, adding that the UN team had been unable to verify the numbers or identities. Clashes broke out between rival army factions in the capital of the oil-producing Upper Nile state, Malakal, on Tuesday. It comes on top of fighting in Unity State, now under rebel control and in Bor, the capital of the restive Jonglei state.
UN rights officers had not yet been able to visit the sites of two other mass graves, Jebel-Kujur and Newside, near Eden, both in Juba, she said. South Sudan's president, who continues to insist that he was the victim of an attempted coup over a week ago, said that government forces had retaken Bor. There was no independent confirmation of a change in control of the town.
Pillay, a former UN war crimes judge, voiced deep concern about the safety of those arrested who are being held in unknown locations, including "several hundred civilians who were reportedly arrested during house-to-house searches and from various hotels in Juba". Hundreds of members of the South Sudan national police service were allegedly ordered to be disarmed and arrested from police stations across Juba, she said. The United States, Norway and Ethiopia are leading efforts to open peace talks. Officials say Kiir and Machar have agreed to meet but specifics including the status of prisoners are holding up talks.
The UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, sought urgently on Monday to nearly double the size of the UN peacekeeping force in the country. The new mandate for the UN mission will boost troop numbers and provide additional UN police. It also calls for more active protection of civilians.
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