S.Sudan rivals set for talks after damning UN report

"Countless incidents of gross violations of human rights and serious violations of humanitarian law have occurred during the conflict in South Sudan," said the report, based on more than 900 interviews with victims and witnesses.

"These include extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, rape, the direct targeting of civilians, often along ethnic lines, as well as ill-treatment and the destruction of property. These are crimes for which perpetrators bear individual criminal responsibility."

- 'Killed like chickens' -

The conflict, which started as a personal rivalry between Kiir and Machar, has seen the army divide along ethnic lines, pitting members of Kiir's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer.

The United States this week unveiled its first sanctions in response to the "unthinkable violence", targeting one military leader from each side.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) embraces South Sudan's President Salva Kiir in Juba on May  …

The war has claimed thousands -- and possibly tens of thousands -- of lives, with over 1.2 million people forced to flee their homes.

The UN report detailed horrific killings, including in the first days after fighting broke out in the capital Juba on December 15.

One Nuer man recounted to UN rights workers how army troops raided houses and shot civilians in the city.

"Nuer were being killed like chickens," he was quoted as saying.

"Witness after witness recounted horror as they watched security forces enter their communities, sometimes in tanks and with heavy weaponry, and round up their relatives and neighbours," the report added.

Picture released April 29, 2014 by UNMISS shows rebel leader Riek Machar speaking with UN High Commi …

"In some cases, victims were killed immediately; in others, they were taken to other locations and killed."

In other areas, Dinka people were targeted for their ethnicity and killed, including in massacres in the northern oil town of Bentiu, where fighting continues.

Aid agencies are warning that South Sudan is now on the brink of Africa's worst famine since the 1980s, while both US Secretary of State John Kerry and the UN human rights chiefs have spoken of their fears that the country could slide towards genocide.

But as pressure builds to stem the brutal conflict, fears are growing that political leaders can no longer hold back their warring forces as communities spiral into cycles of revenge attacks, Amnesty International said in a report Thursday.

Testimonies in Amnesty's report describe civilians including children executed by the side of the road "like sheep", gang rapes of women using sticks, and other victims "grotesquely mutilated" with their lips sliced off.

In one case, a woman who was three months pregnant was gang-raped by 14 men and then forced to watch as seven women who resisted being raped were killed as gunmen instead forced sticks into their vaginas.

"The longer ethnic rivalries are allowed to deepen and fester, the more fragmented South Sudan will become, making reconciliation and sustainable peace much more difficult to achieve," Amnesty warned.

The conflict erupted on December 15 with Kiir accusing Machar of attempting a coup. Machar then fled to the bush to launch a rebellion, insisting that the president had attempted to carry out a bloody purge of his rivals.

• Unrest, Conflicts & War
• Politics & Government
• Riek Machar
• South Sudan
• crimes against humanity
• human rights violations

Source http://news.yahoo.com/sudan-rivals-set-talks-damning-un-report-032947111.html