South Sudanese rebel group SPLM-IO has carried out mass recruitment of child soldiers in southern Unity State including in Panyijar and Leer, the home area of the group's leader Riek Machar, who wants to become the country's president or first vice president.

Over the past few days, the rebel group has dispatched thousands of youths and boys from the southern counties of Unity State northward to frontline areas around the state capital Bentiu.

A local witness in Leer said that he saw around 80 boys around 13 to 14 years old being loaded into a big lorry by SPLM-IO soldiers last week. They boarded the lorry and their mothers and female relatives were crowded around outside.

"Many were crying, the soldiers were holding them back," he said.

The lorry waited for dark to leave Leer. It was the second or third recruitment process since the start of the crisis, according to the witness.

Another witness saw boys marching north on the Leer-Bentiu road two days ago, Saturday, witnessing "probably close to 300 young men and boys."

"They were walking, wearing ordinary, tatty clothes: shorts, t-shirts, sandals, and carrying small bags of belongings. They clustered in groups along the roadside," said the witness.

None of the boys appeared to be armed and they were not accompanied by soldiers, but they were heading in the direction of the frontlines to the north and reportedly had come from Panyijar County to the south.

"There is no future for these kids and no future for the country, because it is lost when the young ones go to die," said the witness in Leer, who himself had been a child soldier in the 1980s.

He also commented about the commanders who recruit these children saying "they are only recruiting the vulnerable children who have no power. Their own children are safe in Uganda or United States. When I see these young boys I feel sad because you can get a permanent trauma that you cannot forget."

The former child soldier estimated that there were 2,500 new recruits en route from Panyijar and another 1,500 who had been recruited from Leer.

This report comes after another source said that on Friday "around 300 youth, many underage" were forcibly recruited in Old Fangak while UNICEF announced Saturday that the group of boys recruited in Wau Shilluk is at least 89 in number but actually "may be in the hundreds".

Altogether, this suggests that the number of boys recruited into armed forces in South Sudan over the two to three weeks is likely to be significantly more than a mere few hundred.  

File photo: A rebel soldier and a child in Malakal, 26 February 2014 (AP/Ilya Gridneff)

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Johnson Olony abducted 'hundreds' of boys to send to front lines (28 February)