Hundreds of children feared snatched in South Sudan

Nairobi - Unicef, the UN children's agency, said on Sunday it feared that hundreds of boys were kidnapped last month in the northeast of South Sudan, raising suspicions that the abductors were from a pro-government militia.

Unicef estimated last week that 89 boys, some as young as 13, were abducted by an armed group in Wau Shilluk, a riverside town in government-held territory within oil-rich Upper Nile state.

"The organisation now believes the number of children may be in the hundreds," Unicef said in a statement.