More than 1 000 South Sudanese troops died during the battle for Sudan’s main oilfield of Heglig, the Sudanese armed forces commander said on Monday, as a stench of death filled the air.
“The numbers of killed from SPLM are 1 200,” Kamal Marouf said during an address to thousands of troops in the area, from which Southern forces said they had withdrawn at the weekend.
The toll is impossible to verify but an AFP correspondent who accompanied Marouf said the putrid bodies of dead South Sudanese soldiers lay beneath trees which are scattered about the area.
He said the number of bodies was so large they were “uncountable”.
Corpses bore the South Sudanese flag on their uniforms.