A top official yesterday admitted that some South Sudanese soldiers "might have" committed atrocities against civilians and he disclosed that an investigation committee set up a year ago has ended its work and filed a confidential report with President Salva Kiir.

Government troops including the presidential guard have been accused of carrying out racial massacres of minimum several hundred people in Juba in mid-December 2013, according to human rights groups. Witnesses saw truckloads of bodies carried from Juba's streets.

At a briefing to foreign diplomats yesterday, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Abdoun Terkoc spoke briefly about accountability efforts, following the decision by the African Union to delay consideration of the release of a commission of inquiry report.

He mentioned that Justice John Wol Makec, head of the Investigation Committee to Investigate on Human Rights Abuses, has completed his work. The committee was formed by presidential decree about a year ago.

"On the side of government, of course in any war situation some soldiers take law into their own hand. I want to be transparent with you: there might have been some atrocities committed by individual soldiers," said Terkoc. "And because, to correct that thing, a committee was formed under the Most Learned Judge John Wol Makec, to investigate into the so-called atrocities committed by some of the soldiers."

He added, "That committee has ended its work, it has presented its report to the president and the president is studying it."

"I think soon the orders will come out -- those involved, and some of them have been arrested even before the committee was formed -- and the orders will be out to put those who might have committed some atrocities to book. That is on the side of the government."

Terkoc did not specify when the report had been completed nor when the president had received it. Previously the organization Human Rights Watch had reported that Wol's committee refused to provide any information about its work when approached last March and again in July.

Meanwhile, Terkoc also went on to emphasize that the SPLM-IO rebels have committed terrible atrocities and these need to be condemned. "On the side of the rebels, they have committed a lot of atrocities, killing people, started by Gadet shooting his second in command in Bor -- and they rebelled and they came and attacked Bor."

"They killed people, even nuns, sisters -- old sisters as old as 80 years old," he said, referring also to massacres in Malakal and the Bentiu mosque.

File photo: President Salva Kiir