S. Sudan civil war: International community fails to stop fighting

Nairobi

Girls gang raped by soldiers then burned alive, boys castrated, armies of child fighters,  the litany of atrocities in South Sudan's civil war is growing, with the international community apparently powerless to stop the fighting.

As the world's youngest nation prepares to mark its fourth year of independence from Sudan on Thursday, South Sudan finds itself in the ignominious position of being "lower in terms of human development than just about every other place on earth," according to a UN report documenting the ravages of the war.

Analysts warn the only obvious diplomatic leverage left to pressure the warring parties into making peace -- sanctions -- could actually worsen the conflict.

The war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings across the country that has split the impoverished landlocked nation along ethnic lines.

Kiir and Machar have accepted "collective responsibility for the crisis", but the 18-month-old war, in which tens of thousands have been killed, rumbles on with no end in sight.

At least seven ceasefires have been agreed and broken. When Kiir and Machar last met in late June they failed to even agree a deal on paper, with the talks failing to "bear any tangible results", a rebel spokesman said.