BOR, 24 February 2014 (IRIN)-A handful of volunteers in almost deserted Bor,
capital of South Sudan's Jonglei State, remove dead bodies from homes, put
them in body bags donated by the International Committee of the Red Cross,
and place them in mass graves.
Since the emergence of an armed rebellion in mid-December, government troops
have lost and won control of the town several times. On 23 February, the
army said it had repelled further attempts to take Bor.
"Maybe 60 percent of Bor has been cleared," said Jonglei's acting governor
Aquilla Lam, returning from the burial of 134 people the same morning.
John Prendergast, director of the anti-genocide Enough Project, said he
visited three other mass graves the week before IRIN's visit, where
"hundreds of people have been buried...
"Every day, dozens of new corpses are discovered in abandoned homes. The
body bags prepared by medical workers appear along the roads with relentless
regularity."
Some white body bags still lie along the main routes.
"Because most of the town has been abandoned, there is no way to know how
many dead are still to be counted," Prendergast added.
Hundreds are awaiting burial at a site where diggers from the UN Mission in
South Sudan (UNMISS) are clearing more space in a field that used to serve
as a cemetery for a few dozen people who died of diseases.
Crumpled sheets of metal and piles of litter are all that remain of the
market in Bor; burnt huts - some said to contain the bodies of their owners
- line pockmarked dirt roads.
Estimates for the numbers killed across South Sudan since mid-December vary
widely: in January, the International Crisis Group suggested 10,000; some
diplomats put the toll at ten times that figure.
Fleeing aid and church workers talk of devastation in towns such as Bentiu
and Malakal in South Sudan's oil producing states of Unity and Upper Nile
where rebels have massed and are still attacking.
Access to bodies difficult
Thousands are thought to have been killed in Bor and surrounding areas, but
access to the bodies is almost impossible in five of Jonglei's 11 counties
where rebels are still operating.
"We have people going house to house to house looking [for bodies], but we
don't have any vehicles," said acting governor Lam.
He is reluctant to give a figure but thinks that "it's over 1,000 people"
killed in Bor centre alone. He said that some of the Nuer White Army
fighters that attacked Bor were as young as 10 or 12 and "armed only with
spears". Many were gunned down as government and Ugandan troops tried to
protect the town.
Around 74,000 people - mostly from Bor and surrounding counties - fled to
Minkamen in neighbouring Lakes State. Some escaped the gunmen by paying
boatmen to whisk them to safety. Others simply plunged into the
crocodile-infested Nile.
A mass grave has been dug by the UN at the St Andrew's Episcopal Church in
Bor, where 22 people are buried, including 14 women who were shot dead, or
dragged out, raped and had their throats slit.
Meanwhile, food is a major concern.
Standing by his shop that is now just a shell covered in a thin white
dusting of flour - the only reminder of the 6,000 stolen bags - businessman
Ayuen Guen is worried that people trickling back will have nothing to eat.
"There is no food items, there is nothing." Guen would like to import more
food from Uganda, but with banks destroyed and the government in war mode,
he cannot change his South Sudanese pounds into dollars to buy anything.
He only knows that he lost an uncle in the fighting and is concerned that he
cannot reach his brothers and many friends.
"A lot of people - I'm calling them, and the number is not going through...
This place was all just bodies when I came here... In all the town, street
children who were in the market - all these people, innocent people - they
killed them. Even the mad people."