Dispatches: Counting the dead in South Sudan | Human Rights Watch

Dispatches: Counting the dead in South Sudan | Human Rights Watch:

In the dark of the hut, it is hard to see her, but the smell of death is unmistakable. The woman’s curled hand sticks out from beneath the bed she hid under in one last, futile act to save herself. Outside in the church compound, four other women lie dead, one with an obvious bullet hole in her head. In another room the bodies of six women lie in a mess of their embroidered sheets and foods, putrid body fluids and maggots that cover the floor.

Traveling around the South Sudan town of Bor, I saw scores of bodies and fresh graves. In the Block 10 neighborhood the bodies of a woman and a girl are rotting together in one room. “The woman stayed here because her daughter was sick,” a neighbor says. “But they were both killed by the rebels.”