20th June, 2015
United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), on Friday, said horrific details have emerged that the three weeks of violence in South Sudan left 129 children dead and displaced more people since the beginning of 2015.
Anthony Lake, UNICEF Chief, said this during the fund’s update on the situation in South Sudan in New York.
He said children in Northern Unity State had been thrown into burning buildings, raped and castrated and called for an end to the “unspeakable violence in the name of humanity.
“Civilians have been terrorised and forced to flee for their lives in Greater Upper Nile region.”
He noted that the gruesome details of violence against youngsters, including girls as young as eight, have emerged.
Lake said abuses against boys and girls across the war-torn country had also reached a “new level of brutality.”
He added that the situation in South Sudan had caused humanitarian crisis that left an estimated 4.6 million people food insecure and more than two million displaced.
Meanwhile, he said, there had been attacks on UN bases in the country in the past months, where more than 140,000 people were sheltering for safety and protection.