South Sudan death toll hits 50,000

UNITED NATIONS: At least 50,000 people have been killed in South Sudan’s two-year civil war, a senior United Nations official said on Wednesday, a five-fold increase in the death toll given by humanitarian agencies in the early months of the conflict. A political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his former deputy, Riek Machar, sparked the war in December 2013, which has reopened ethnic fault lines between Kiir’s Dinka and Machar’s Nuer people. “Fifty thousand killed, maybe more, 2.2 million refugees and displaced, famine coming and looming in just a few months,” the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. He added that he saw little prospect of implementing an August peace deal.