01/08/2014 09:59 GMT
by Peter MARTELL
JUBA, January 8, 2014 (AFP) - On the floor of the UN-run hospital in Juba, and along the corridors outside, lines of men groan in pain over bandaged gunshot wounds as they shift positions.
More than three weeks of still ongoing brutal fighting in South Sudan are feared to have left thousands dead and many more wounded.
James Bangang, a father of two, was in the key town of Bor, north of the capital Juba, when the army retook it after a week-long occupation by rebel forces and mutineering soldiers.
"There was chaos, so much shooting and killing," said the 26-year-old who insists he us a civilian, not a rebel.
"The government soldiers attacked, and I was shot," he said, pointing to his arm, encased in plaster. "I ran to the UN base to escape."
Now he is recovering on a thin mattress, placed in the shade outside the hospital, whose main ward is already crowded with patients.
Government troops later lost control of Bor to the rebels, and are still battling to wrest it back. If they succeed, it will be the fourth time the town has changed hands since the fighting began on December 15.
One man has a bullet wound through his cheek, other young men lie with legs or arms smashed by automatic gunfire.
But here at the main hospital for the United Nations peacekeepers, it is not only South Sudanese being treated.
In another room is a Nepalese UN peacekeeper, wounded when red hot shrapnel from a mortar round sliced into the top of his legs.
Bishnu Bahadur Bhandri, a warrant officer with the Nepalese army serving with the peacekeeping force, was injured in the fighting in rebel-held Bor.
"I was on the radio... and boom!" Bhandri said, looking exhausted but smiling as he rested.
'Humanitarian catastrophe'
The fighting began as a clash between army units loyal to South Sudan's President Salva Kiir and those loyal to his former deputy Riek Machar, since escalating into war between government troops and a loose alliance of ethnic militia forces and mutinous army commanders.
Little progress appears to have yet been made in talks in Ethiopia aimed at securing a ceasefire.
More than 1,500 cases have come through the hospital since fighting began on December 15, including some 200 with gunshot wounds, said Colonel Phok Chanthy, a Cambodian army doctor running the UN hospital.
Many were evacuated by air to the hospital in the capital Juba.
The scale of the violence -- and the speed with which it has spread -- has left many in shock.
The challenges faced by this small hospital alone signal how dire the needs are elsewhere, especially out in the remote bush where the worst fighting is now taking place.
"This is the biggest test that this young nation has ever had... we just don't know what is happening in areas where there has been a lot of violence," said Toby Lanzer, United Nations aid chief for South Sudan.
"We've got well over 200,000 people who are displaced in the past three weeks, and I think that number can double very quickly."
But it is not only the wounded stretching the hospital. Here in the UN base, almost 70 babies have been born since the conflict erupted.
"Normally this hospital is designed to serve the UN mission," said Chanthy. "But we have not stopped working to treat those in need coming in."
Atrocities have been committed by both sides, and the UN has said it will investigate allegations of crimes against humanity.
"We've got an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe... on top of a situation where we were already aiming to help 3.1 million in South Sudan," Lanzer added.
"It is a really critical period for the country. Hostilities just have to end."
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