africatodayonline.blogspot.com -
NAIROBI (AFP) - The UN children's agency said Sunday it fears hundreds of boys were kidnapped last month in the northeast of South Sudan, raising suspicions that the abductors were from a pro-government militia.
Last week Unicef had estimated that 89 boys, some as young as 13, were abducted by an armed group in Wau Shilluk, a riverside town in government-held territory within oil-rich Upper Nile state.
"The organisation now believes the number of children may be in the hundreds," Unicef said in a statement.
It added that the suspected kidnappers were from a "militia... aligned with the government's SPLA forces." Witnesses to the mass abduction on February 15-16 said that unidentified armed soldiers surrounded the community and went house to house taking away by force any boys thought to be over 12 years old.
