South Sudan aid workers shelter in swamp water with their patients

JUBA (AFP): Medics in South Sudan\'s war zone state of Unity described Thursday sheltering in swamp water with their patients to avoid intense gunfire as government troops retook a key fighter enclave. The army of the world\'s youngest nation took the town of Leer from opposition forces, the information minister said late Wednesday, after an almost month-long assault marred by accusations of rampant rights abuses. The UN children\'s agency this week said that in recent fighting girls as young as seven had been raped or killed, boys as young as 10 had been killed and others had been mutilated or abducted by \"armed groups aligned with\" the army. International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) chief in South Sudan Franz Rauchenstein told AFP Thursday that \"reports of direct attacks on civilians continue.\" Fighting broke out in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings across the country. Leer, the birthplace of Machar, was ransacked by government forces in January 2014, with gunmen looting and torching the hospital there run by Doctors Without Borders (MSF). MSF has since rebuilt the hospital, the only referral facility in opposition areas, but was forced to evacuate international staff two weeks ago as fighting approached, leaving some 200,000 people without access to medical care.