S Sudan govt, rebels set for ceasefire talks

South Sudan's warring parties were set to open peace talks yesterday aimed at bringing an end to a nearly three-week-old civil war that has already left thousands dead.
Government and rebel officials confirmed their negotiating teams were preparing to fly to the Ethiopian capital, and diplomats said they expected negotiations on a possible ceasefire to begin later in the day.
"We are expecting them to arrive this afternoon," Ethiopian Foreign Minister Tedros Adhanom told AFP. Ethiopian government spokesman Getachew Reda said the talks would focus on "monitoring mechanisms for the ceasefire".
Fighting erupted in South Sudan December 15, when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of attempting a coup. Machar has denied this, in turn accusing the president of conducting a violent purge of his opponents.
The fighting has spread across the country, with the rebels seizing several areas in the oil-rich north. On Tuesday the rebels also recaptured the town of Bor, capital of Jonglei state and situated just 200 kilometres (125 miles) north of the capital Juba, and fighting was reportedly continuing in the area yesterday.
Thousands of people are feared dead, UN officials say, while close to 200,000 civilians have been forced to flee their homes -- many seeking refuge with badly overstretched UN peacekeepers.
The conflict has also been marked by an upsurge of ethnic violence pitting members of Kiir's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer community, and the UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) said that "atrocities are continuing to occur" across the country despite efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.
"UNMISS is gravely concerned about mounting evidence of gross violations of international human rights law that have occurred in South Sudan during the past 15 days," it said in a statement, reporting "extra-judicial killings of civilians and captured soldiers" and the "discovery of large numbers of bodies" in Juba, Bor and Malakal, the main town in oil-producing Upper Nile state.
The UN mission also said it is "actively collecting information" on the atrocities to be used for future official investigations. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon has already warned that senior South Sudanese figures "will be held personally accountable" for any crimes against humanity.