South Sudan troops 'crushed civilians with tanks': HRW

Nairobi

South Sudanese government troops crushed fleeing civilians with tanks, then reversed to check they had killed them, carried out public gang rapes and burned people alive, a rights group said Wednesday.

The report by Human Rights Watch (HRW) has shocking allegations of atrocities committed by government forces in the ongoing 19-month-old war, documenting "deliberate attacks on civilians" that it said constitute war crimes. 

"They were running with the tanks after the people, and then after they hit them they would roll back over them, to confirm that they were dead," one woman told HRW.

The attacks were allegedly carried out by government troops and an allied militia from the Bul Nuer tribe.

Another witness, a 30-year-old woman, said troops in a tank hunted down her nephew.

"I saw him... he was crushed before he reached the river... we were running together, he ran in order to hide," she told HRW.

Another described finding the squashed bodies of her two male relatives.

"Their bodies had been grinded," she said, one of a string of testimonies documented in the HRW report, titled "They Burned it All", based on interviews with 174 victims and witnesses from the northern battleground state of Unity. 

Civilians fled into swamps to escape, but troops chased them down using amphibious armoured vehicles, raking hiding places with machine guns.