'Thousands' killed as South Sudan slides towards civil war

Thousands of South Sudanese have been killed in over a week of violence with reports of bodies piled in mass graves, the UN said Tuesday, as the Security Council agreed to nearly double its peacekeepers in the young nation threatening to slide into civil war.

The top UN humanitarian chief in the country Toby Lanzer said Tuesday there was "absolutely no doubt in my mind that we're into the thousands" of dead, the first clear indication of the scale of the conflict engulfing South Sudan, which won independence from Sudan to much fanfare just two years ago.