At least 50,000 people have been killed in South Sudan’s two-year civil war, a senior Unitd Nations official said on Wednesday, five times more than the figure issued by humanitarian agencies in the early months of the conflict.
The world’s youngest nation descended into war in December 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his then deputy Riek Machar of plotting to overthrow his government.
The ensuing dispute 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,” Reuters news agency reports the senior official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, to say. He added that he saw little prospect of implementing an August peace deal.
The UN last month accused South Sudan’s warring parties of killing, abducting and displacing civilians, and destroying property despite conciliatory rhetoric by kiir and Machar.
After months of ineffective negotiations and failed ceasefires, both sides agreed in January to share positions in a transitional government, and last month Kiir reappointed Machar to his former post as vice president.
“Where are we on the implementation of the peace agreement? Nowhere,” the senior U.N. official said. “We see violence spreading along ethnic lines in other parts of South Sudan which had been spared so far.”
A UN panel that monitors the conflict in the country for the Security Council stated in January that Kiir and Machar are still completely in charge of their forces, and are therefore directly to blame for the killings.
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