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Gunmen in South Sudan have raped girls, seized boys to become soldiers and torched towns in some of the heaviest fighting seen in the 17-month-long civil war, the United Nations (UN) said on Tuesday.

Over 300 000 civilians have been left without “life-saving aid” in the northern battleground state of Unity, after the UN and aid agencies pulled out due to a surge in fighting, with over 100 000 forced to flee their homes.

The UN peacekeeping mission said it was “increasingly concerned” about reports from Guit and Koch counties in Unity state of “towns and villages being burned, killings, abductions of males as young as 10 years of age, rape and abduction of girls and women, and the forced displacement of civilians.”