UN sanctions on six S. Sudan military chiefs

Security Council members voted on Wednesday to impose sanctions on the six after the US, Britain and France forwarded their names to a newly formed committee.

The men - three generals from the government side and three commanders from the rebel forces - will be subject to a global travel ban and assets freeze for the duration of the conflict.

They are the first people to be blacklisted in a conflict that began in December 2013. Since then, it has forced more than two million people to flee their homes, killed thousands and created a humanitarian emergency.

"As the members of the Security Council demonstrated today, those who commit atrocities and undermine peace will face consequences," US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power said in a statement.

A committee to punish those responsible for the violence was set up in March by the United Nations, which had become frustrated with a string of failed ceasefires.

Newest nation in despair

Fighting has raged for more than 18 months between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and those supporting former vice president Riek Machar.

The violence has exacerbated a humanitarian disaster in South Sudan - the world's newest nation - with more than 2.5 million people facing severe food shortages and two million driven from their homes.

Violence came initially after President Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka, accused his former Vice President Riek Machar, of the ethnic Nuer people, of trying to topple him in a coup. The fighting erupted along ethnic lines, involving mass killings, sexual violence and the abduction of children, possibly to be used as soldiers.

The UN mission in South Sudan described in a recent report the horrific violence in the latest fighting in Unity state. Witnesses claimed the army gang-raped girls and torched them alive in huts.

Mass ethnic slayings

Among the more prominent of those sanctioned was Major General Marial Chanuong Yol Mangok, commander of President Salva Kiir's presidential guard, accused of overseeing the execution of ethnic Nuer civilians when fighting broke out. They were buried in mass graves in and around Juba.

Simon Gatwech Dual, the rebels' chief of general staff, is cited for targeting women, children and civilians. He is said to have told his fighters they should "not make any distinctions between different Dinka tribes and should kill all of them."

The UN committee had set a 1900 UTC deadline for objections, amid some expectation that Russia and China might refuse to endorse the move. No objections were received.

rc/gsw (AFP, AP, Reuters)