UN says S. Sudan army committed rape, burnt girls alive

The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Tuesday said the South Sudanese army and associated armed groups have committed widespread human rights abuses including rape and burning girls alive.

"UNMISS has found evidence of widespread human rights abuses allegedly committed by the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) and associated armed groups during the recent escalation of fighting in Unity State," the mission said in a report.

"Some of the most disturbing allegations compiled by UNMISS human rights officers focused on the abduction and sexual abuse of women and girls, some of whom were reportedly burnt alive in their dwellings," the report noted.

It added that the SPLA and allied militias from Mayom County carried out a campaign against the local population that killed civilians, looted and destroyed villages and displaced over 100,000 people.

"this recent upsurge (in fighting) has not only been marked by allegations of killing, rape, abduction, looting, arson and displacement, but also by a new brutality and intensity," UNMISS said.

"The scope and level of cruelty that has characterized the reports suggests a depth of antipathy that exceeds political differences," it said.

UNMISS also said it tried to visit the sites of the alleged atrocities to verify the allegations but was routinely denied access by the SPLA, noting that there were also logistical obstacles.

Ellen Margrethe Loej, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for South Sudan and head of UNMISS, urged South Sudan army to allow UN human rights officers unfettered access to the sites of these reported violations.

"Revealing the truth of what happened offers the best hope for ensuring accountability for such terrible violence and ending the cycle of impunity that allows these abuses to continue," Loej said.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee homes. Endit