Rivals talk peace while killing civilians -U.N.

February 20, 2016 9:00 AM

He told the U.N. Security Council that the conflict threatens stability in the entire region.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks during a meeting with Canada's Governor General David Johnston (not pictured) at Rideau Hall in Ottawa, Canada, February 12, 2016. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

South Sudans warring government and opposition are killing, abducting, and displacing civilians and destroying property despite conciliatory rhetoric by both sides, the United Nations said on Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due to travel to South Sudan's capital Juba next Thursday to meet with President Salva Kiir. A political dispute between Kiir and his former deputy Riek Machar two years ago sparked a civil war and renewed hostilities between Kiir's Dinka and Machar's Nuer people. More than 10,000 people have been killed.

After months of ineffective negotiations and failed ceasefires, both sides agreed in January to share positions in a transitional government and earlier this month Kiir re-appointed Machar to his former post as vice president.

"It cannot be tolerated that leaders make declarations in Juba, while the hostilities and attacks on the civilian population continue and intensify across the country," said U.N. Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic.

Simonovich said that in the Greater Upper Nile region of South Sudan government forces had systematically razed villages and that sexual violence and abuse of children's rights were rampant.

"During an attack on Koch county, one woman described how soldiers killed her husband, then tied her to a tree and forced her to watch as her 15-year-old daughter was raped by at least 10 soldiers," Simonovich said.

U.N. peacekeepers are sheltering nearly 200,000 people at six protection sites in South Sudan and more than 2.3 million people have been displaced.

Eighteen people were killed in fighting on Wednesday at one of those U.N. compounds and more than 90 were wounded, the U.N. Refugee Agency said.

Two Medicins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) workers were among the dead, the international medical aid group said.

"Violence continues in many regions of the country, including in areas that had previously been relatively calm," Deputy U.N. envoy to South Sudan Moustapha Soumare told the council.