Hundreds more child soldiers recruited in South Sudan

Warring forces in South Sudan have abducted as many as a thousand more child solders in the latest abuses in the 18-month long civil war, monitors said Thursday, amid fresh efforts to bring rivals back to talks.

Rebel troops carried out house-to-house searches snatching children as young as 13 in the battleground northern state of Upper Nile in two days in early June, monitors from East Africa's eight-country IGAD bloc said in their latest report.

It blamed notorious militia commander Johnson Olony, a rogue ex-government general with a track record for press ganging children to fight, who joined rebel forces in May.