UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon today strongly condemned the commandeering of humanitarian vehicles and the theft of food and other desperately needed aid by government and anti-government forces in violence-torn South Sudan.
The UN chief expressed alarm at the rising number of deaths in the fighting in the world's newest nation, spokesman Martin Nesirky said.
South Sudan has a history of ethnic rivalry. The fighting often pits the Dinka ethnic group of President Salva Kiir against the Nuer group of Riek Machar, the former vice president who now commands renegade forces.
Fighting between loyalist troops and renegade forces since mid-December, largely along ethnic lines, has left nearly 10,000 people dead, according to one estimate by an International Crisis Group analyst.
The secretary-general singled out the reported deaths of 200 civilians fleeing violence in Malakal in oil-rich Upper Nile State who drowned when their boat sank in the Nile on Saturday.
