The United Nations has expressed grave concern over the recruitment of more than 9-thousand children by armed groups in war-weary South Sudan.


"More than 9,000 children have been recruited into armed forces by both sides.... Children have been also killed during indiscriminate attacks on civilians by both sides," the UN high commissioner for human Rights Navi Pillay said on Sunday.

Pillay went on to say that 32 schools have been taken over by military forces. Many children have been raped and killed in indiscriminate attacks by both sides.

Pillay said there have also been more than 20 attacks on clinics and health centers across the country. She also added that the conflict in the African country was now “reaching boiling point.”

“The prospect of widespread hunger and malnutrition being inflicted on hundreds of thousands of their people, because of their personal failure to resolve their differences peacefully did not appear to concern them very much,” media outlets quoted Pillay as saying.

Senior UN official made the remarks after touring massacre sites in South Sudan.

On Friday, UN Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide Adama Dieng warned that the current situation in South Sudan could spiral into genocide as ethnic violence continues in the African country.

“In the current situation, we see elements that we could categorize as risk factors of genocide and other atrocity crimes.” Dieng told a UN Security Council briefing session.

The conflict has pitted government forces loyal to President Salva Kiir, a Dinka-- against rebels aligned with former vice-president Riek Machar-- who hails from the Nuer tribe.

Thousands of people have been killed and many others displaced by more than four months of fighting between government troops and rebels.

Mass killings, which appear to be ethnically motivated, have sparked international condemnation.

The UN sources say despite January's ceasefire, government and opposition forces are still engaged in heavy fighting in several areas including Jonglei, Unity and the Upper Nile states.