Mass grave found as South Sudan slides towards civil war

A mass grave has been found in South Sudan, the United Nations said Tuesday, amid fresh reports of brutal ethnic killings and ongoing battles that threaten to tip the young nation into civil war. UN rights chief Navi Pillay said a mass grave had been found in the rebel-held town of Bentiu, while there were "reportedly at least two other mass graves" in the capital Juba. The grim discovery follows more than a week of escalating battles between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and those backing his rival Riek Machar, a former vice president who was sacked in July. The unrest has taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting Kiir's Dinka tribe against the Nuer tribe, to which Machar belongs. The official toll nationwide has stood at 500 dead for days, although numbers are feared to be far higher, aid workers say. Witnesses that AFP has spoken to recount a wave of atrocities, including an orchestrated campaign of ethnic mass killings and rape. UN chief Ban Ki-moon has warned warring factions reports of crimes against humanity will be investigated, as well as asking the Security Council to nearly double the size of the UN mission in the country. However, Machar said for the first time Tuesday he was ready to accept Kiir's offer of talks "without precondition", suggesting neighbouring Ethiopia as a neutral location. "We are ready for talks. I have formed my delegation," he told Radio France Internationale (RFI), adding he had spoken earlier in the day to US Secretary of State John Kerry and Ethiopia's Foreign Minster Tedros Adhanom. "We want a democratic nation, we want democratic free and fair elections. We want Salva Kiir to call it a day," Machar said, listing his demands, which follow days of shuttle diplomacy by African nations and calls from Western powers for fighting to stop. Fighting has spread to half of the young nation's 10 states, the UN said Tuesday, with hundreds of thousands fleeing to the countryside, prompting warnings of an imminent humanitarian disaster. Pillay's spokeswoman told AFP that a UN official had on Monday visited a mass killing site in Bentiu, the capital of the oil-rich Unity State, and counted at least 34 bodies with dozens more feared dead. "The UN official who visited saw 14 bodies in the grave and another 20 at a river side nearby, but reportedly there are 75 SPLA (Sudan People's Liberation Army) soldiers, Dinka, who are unaccounted for and feared dead," she said. With fighting ongoing, overstretched UN bases have been flooded with at least 45,000 civilians, including some 17,000 struggling with limited supplies at the compound inside the rebel-held town of Bor, as peacekeepers bolster fortifications ahead of an expected assault. Gunmen stormed a UN compound last week, killing two Indian peacekeepers and some 20 ethnic Dinka civilians who had gone there for protection. UN vote on extra troops Rebel fighters are also reported to have committed atrocities in areas they control as the impoverished nation, which won independence from Sudan to much fanfare just two years ago, appeared to be sliding deeper into civil war. UN chief Ban has recommended the Security Council send 5,500 more soldiers to reinforce the existing 7,000 troops from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan. He also called for hundreds more police officers. The Security Council is set to vote on the matter later on Tuesday. "The world is watching all sides in South Sudan," Ban told reporters ahead of the emergency Security Council talks on the crisis. President Kiir has accused Machar of starting the fighting by attempting a coup, while Machar says the president has exploited tensions within the army to carry out a purge. Rebels loyal to Machar have since seized control of several areas north of Juba. Speaking from the relative safety of a UN base in Juba, two ethnic Nuer men alleged they were arrested by government soldiers along with an estimated 250 other men, herded into a police station in the capital Juba and then fired on. "It was horrible, because to survive you had to cover yourself with the bodies of dead people, and... the bodies started to smell really bad. I don't want to talk much about it," said one of the men, named Simon, who would only give his first name for fear of reprisals. "We remained only 12 people. The rest were killed off," said Gatwech, another survivor and witness to the alleged massacre, who was also nursing several wounds and recounted similar details. The government has denied being behind any ethnic violence. The testimonies cannot be independently verified because the movements of the few journalists and aid workers in the city have been severely restricted. Machar's forces have seized two key state capitals, the town of Bor in the powder-keg eastern Jonglei state, just 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of Juba, as well as Bentiu in the crucial oil-producing Unity state.