Hundreds of civilian casualties in S Sudan battle

JUBA, Sudan (AP) — Southern Sudan soldiers opened fire indiscriminately on men, women and even children after a battle with fighters belonging to their minority ethnic group, killing or wounding hundreds of civilians, according to witness accounts contained in confidential U.N. reports.

A U.N. team that traveled to the Nile River village 11 days after the April 23 killings saw more than two dozen corpses and said grass-roofed mud huts clearly contained many more bodies, but the toll of 254 dead civilians given by a local official has not been independently verified.

The three U.N. reports obtained by The Associated Press are the first accounts of mass civilian casualties in …