South Sudan on the brink of all-out civil war
THE smell of rotting bodies drifts over the central hospital in South Sudan’s capital, Juba, those of victims being taken for mass burial, shot during violence threatening a return to war.
The latest batch of 17 bodies was collected from the streets after baking in the sun for days, and brought to the hospital’s morgue for identification. The corpses were put into body bags, then lifted onto a large truck.
They join more than 200 already buried in International Committee of the Red Cross mass graves.
“We are doing what we can,” said Andrea Catta Preta, from the Swissbased organisation.
Nearby, Red Cross workers peeled off white protective suits and face masks, kicked off thick black rubber boots and sat dripping sweat in the intense heat, sharing cigarettes after the grim task. Some sat quietly in the shade of a tree, heads between legs, retching at the stench.
As during much of the civil war that started in December 2013, killings during the latest fighting happened along ethnic lines. Survivors and witnesses reported that gunmen asked what language people spoke and shot them if it was that of a rival tribe.
Those who had fled described wanton destruction. “They drove a tank through houses,” said 27-year-old mother of three Jacky, sheltering in the compound of the St Theresa Catholic Cathedral. “Mine they burnt.”
The July 8-11 violence had left 42 000 people internally displaced in the world’s youngest nation, said William Spindler, the spokesman for the UN Refugee Agency.
However, the International Organisation for Migration said many people were returning.
“Humanitarian access to affected people has improved dramatically since Monday. But this can only be sustained if the ceasefire holds,” said John McCue, IOM South Sudan head of operations.
The bitter conflict began when President Salva Kiir accused his vice-president Riek Machar, a former rebel, of plotting a coup. Machar’s sacking in 2013 set off a cycle of retaliatory killings that split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines and drove more than two million people out of their homes.
The conflict has been characterised by horrific rights abuses, including gang rapes, the wholesale burning of villages and cannibalism.
According to the UN, there were about 114 000 South Sudanese refugees in neighbouring countries before December 2013 but that figure has ballooned to 835 000 now. —