Bodies litter looted South Sudan town

All that remains of Bor, a small market town that has changed hands four times in the latest South Sudan conflict, is an overwhelming smell of putrefying bodies and scattered trash that successive waves of looters ignored.
Warped sheets of rusting corrugated iron roofing, apparently the remains of market stalls, lie in tangled heaps.
Scattered across the street are the objects the looters did not want- ragged bits of clothing, cardboard boxes, single plastic slippers.
The ruins of the town, in which hundreds of civilians were killed, in some cases shot in the back as they fled, are eerily silent.

"My son was killed when the enemies came attacking people. My brother ran with his family and my son was also trying to run but as he was running to hide he was shot in the back," recounted Majuer Garang, a tall, stoic man, under a tree on the outskirts of Bor where the dead remain where they fell, on narrow paths, or curled up under beds in their homes.
Towards the town centre a barefoot woman scurries across the main street, a table on her head.

Residents have started trickling slowly back into town for a few hours just to see if they can salvage any belongings the looters left behind.

Some of the bodies have been piled into shallow graves. Others still litter the streets, the white plastic sheeting- now covered with a thick layer of yellow dust- that covers some of them shields them from view but fails to disguise the fetid smell after days or weeks in the baking heat. Pedestrians hurrying past hold their breath.
The mayor of Bor, Nhial Majak Nhial is angry. He says his priority is to see the rebels who raped and massacred women, children and those too old to flee held accountable.
"My biggest problem isn't to reconstruct the town, or clean the town, it's to make sure that...People must be held accountable," he told AFP.

It would be premature for residents to resettle the town right now, he said.
Tens of thousands fled Bor and its surrounding villages, preferring to take their chances against crocodiles in the White Nile and sniper fire from its banks- anything to get out of town. Hundreds drowned in the attempt. Those who made it are now camping under trees in Awerial county on the other side of the river, where some have received help from aid agencies. Those who did not flee are for the most part dead.
"We wait for the security situation to improve before we call the population to come back. For now they're better off in Awerial county than being here," Nhial said, noting that Bor town lacked even the most basic necessities such as food and mattresses.