AU reports mass graves and cannibalism in South Sudan

Atrocities by all sides has been discovered in South Sudan's civil war, including testimony of forced cannibalism and the detection of mass graves, according to a report by the African Union.

The report alleged that government troops carried out organized killings of ethnic Nuer in Juba, the capital. It also stated that Vice-President Riek Machar, an ethnic Nuer, became a rebel leader.

The African Union investigators, led by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo discovered mass graves of hundreds of Nuer men who had been executed. It is said that the victims were tortured; sometimes forced to jump into bonfires or eat human flesh.

Amid the Juba killings, Machar fled the capital and mobilized an insurgency which committed revenge attacks against the Dinka, sparking a cycle of violence in the towns of Bor, Malakal, and Bentiu, which also included rapes and killings in churches and hospitals, according to the report. Those revenge attacks occurred so quickly they probably were were also co-ordinated, it added.

Kiir and Machar signed a peace agreement in August but fighting continues.