Baku-APA. Patients, medical and humanitarian staff in medical facilities have come under attack in South Sudan, where 58 people have been killed since December, an aid group says, APA reports quoting Press TV.
In a report released on Tuesday Doctors Without Borders said that of 58 killed in four hospitals, 25 were patients, 27 had sought shelter, four remain unidentified and two are government officials. Hospitals have also been plundered.
“Humanitarian law and principles provide legal protection to civilian populations and medical personnel and the medical mission in particular. Deliberate attacks on medical facilities and personnel constitute a clear violation of such provisions,” the report noted, underlining that all parties in the conflict are bound by provisions of International Humanitarian Law.
The political crisis in South Sudan began after President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, accused former Vice President Riek Machar, a Nuer, of attempting a coup in December 2013.
The conflict soon turned into an all-out war between the army and defectors, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president’s tribe against Machar's.
Thousands have so far been killed and more than one million people have fled their homes since the conflict broke out. The fighting has reduced significantly since the latest ceasefire deal was signed on June 10, but the talks being held in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, between the two warring sides have stalled.
According to the United Nations, gross violations of human rights “on a massive scale” have occurred in the African country.
South Sudan gained independence in July 2011 after its people overwhelmingly voted in a referendum for a split from the North.
The government in Juba is grappling with rampant corruption, unrest and conflict in the deeply impoverished but oil-rich nation.
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