Hundreds dead, thousands flee South Sudan clashes

[Sally]

Imagine having to barricade yourself in your home, afraid to go out because of what was happening outside on the streets!

Hundreds dead, thousands flee South Sudan clashes
AFP | Dec 18, 2013, 04.19 PM IST

JUBA: Hundreds of people have died and up to 20,000 others have fled to UN bases in days of fierce fighting in South Sudan's army after an alleged coup bid, officials said.

The United States ordered non-essential embassy staff out of the country, the world's youngest nation and awash with guns after decades of war, amid fears of a descent into wider ethnic violence.

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Hundreds dead, thousands flee South Sudan clashes - The Times of India

 

[waltky]

Security Council sendin' more troops to Sudan...

Security Council OKs thousands more troops to South Sudan
Tue December 24, 2013 ~ A senior British diplomat arrives in Juba to help with negotiations; U.N. chief says new forces to include troops, police, helicopters; Ethnic killings and mass graves reported in South Sudan, U.N. official says; U.S. Marines are on standby to help rescue Americans stranded in South Sudan

Evidence of atrocities including mass killings emerged Tuesday in South Sudan, and the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to send thousands more troops to protect civilians in the young nation convulsed by violence. The council's vote could nearly double the size of the U.N. peacekeeping force in the country, allowing for up to 12,500 military troops and 1,323 police to patrol there. "Even with additional capabilities, we will not be able to protect every civilian in need in South Sudan," Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said after the unanimous Security Council vote that urged the clashing parties to seek a peaceful solution. "There is no military solution to this conflict," Ban said, later adding that "in this season of peace, I urge the leaders of South Sudan to act for peace."

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Toby Lanzer tweeted that more accounts were reaching him of human rights abuses amid the widening violence that has stoked fears of an all-out civil war in the world's newest country. "Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days," U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a statement. Ban also cited reported rapes and mass graves, and warned that such atrocities could constitute war crimes. One U.N. official saw 14 bodies at a mass grave in Bentiu and another 20 on a nearby riverbank, said Ravina Shamdasani, a UNHCR spokeswoman for the commissioner. "As for the other two reported graves in Juba, we are still working to verify but it is very difficult, and there are reports that some bodies may have already been burned," she said.

South Sudan's breathtaking descent into widespread conflict comes a little more than two years after the nation was ushered into existence with help from international powers after decades of civil war between separatists in the oil-rich south and Sudan's northern government. Fighting began midmonth after President Salva Kiir said forces loyal to the country's dismissed vice president, Riek Machar, launched a coup attempt. Kiir and Machar are longtime rivals. In an interview with CNN, Machar denied there was a coup attempt. South Sudan has suffered from sporadic violence since its formation in 2011. But the broad nature of this conflict and the intensity of the violence -- which U.N. officials say has taken on ethnic overtones -- have raised fears of another genocide along the lines of Rwanda, the African nation where 800,000 people were slaughtered in 1994, according to the United Nations.

Ban said Tuesday that he was asking countries contributing troops and other support to existing missions to allow their forces to be shifted to the South Sudan mission as part of the additions approved by the Security Council's 15-0 vote. He said the request to borrow from other missions was intended to speed up the often lengthy process of getting them authorized and moved into place. "We need at least five battalions and police officers and attack helicopters and utility helicopters, transport airplanes," Ban said. He also noted casualties to U.N. forces in South Sudan in the past week, including three members of the U.N. Mission in South Sudan injured Tuesday at the U.N. base in Bor.

Marines on standby

 

[Indeependent]

We obviously have to get those Israeli troops out of the Sudan!