#yambio

@SZKhaled via Twitter

Father Yoere, an Azande elder

South Sudan has released nearly 120 children in Yambio where they were reported to be associated with the South Sudan National Liberation Movement, bringing the total number of children released to more than three thousand. #AfricanNewsNetwork

South Sudan has released nearly 120 children in Yambio where they were reported to be associated with the South Sudan National Liberation Movement, bringing the total number of children released to more than three thousand.

The release coincided with the international day against the use of child soldiers on Monday. Of the 119 children, 48 were girls and the youngest was only 10 years old.

UNICEF…

Child soldiers released in war-torn South Sudan

Bakhita was only 12 years old when rebels snatched her from her family’s farm, adding her to a grim list of almost 19,000 children that the United Nations says have been recruited, often by force, by armed groups in South Sudan’s brutal civil war.

“I was thinking of my family every day. Sometimes, I cried but I couldn’t escape, the soldiers were everywhere in the bushes,” Bakhita told Reuters in a soft voice from the western town of Yambio, where she was among hundreds of children handed over to the U.N. on Wednesday.

She had been with the rebels two years, she said.

“There’s no house. We sleep in a tent. Sometimes at night, some soldiers come to my place and want to rape me by force. If I resist, they will beat me and make me cook for a week as a punishment for refusing to sleep with them,” the 14-year-old said, beginning to cry.

More than 300 children, 87 of them girls, were released by armed groups in Wednesday’s ceremony – the start of a process which the U.N. says is expected to see at least 700 children freed in the coming weeks.

But militias are recruiting children faster than humanitarians can free them. (Reuters)

Photos from top: Stefanie Glinski/AFP/Getty Images (2), Sam Mednick/AP,  Stefanie Glinski/AFP/Getty Images, Denis Dumo/Reuters