World's youngest country grapples with deadly growing pains: Turmoil grips South Sudan

A tank patrols a main road in Juba, South Sudan, on Monday after fighting broke out following months of tension after President Salva Kiir fired his deputy Riek Machar in July. Kiir blamed troops loyal to Machar for the violence

By Henry Austin, NBC News contributor
The world's youngest country is grappling with deadly growing pains, with hundreds killed this week amid fears that the violence may descend into the kind of ethnic bloodbath not seen since Rwanda in the 1990s.
Three U.N. peacekeepers are among 500 people killed and 800 wounded in South Sudan since Sunday night, when gunbattles erupted between army factions loyal to the country's president and his former vice president, who are members of different tribes. The conflict has deepened divisions in the two-year-old nation.

Civilians seek shelter at a United Nations compound in Bor, South Sudan, on Wednesday.

Roughly 34,000 people have sought refuge in U.N. camps and the U.S. and other countries are evacuating non-essential embassy staff and citizens. President Barack Obama said in a letter to Congress that 45 military personnel were dispatched to South Sudan on Wednesday to protect U.S. citizens and property.
The U.N. Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that civilians were among "hundreds of patients, including many with gunshot wounds" being treated in hospitals.
On Thursday, India's ambassador to the U.N. said militia groups had "targeted and killed" three of the country's soldiers serving as peacekeepers in South Sudan. The Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday morning.
Before the peacekeepers were slain, the United Nations had said its 7,000-strong force would not intervene in the conflict.
One government worker told NBC News that friends had revealed in panicked phone calls that soldiers were going door-to-door and making residents speak so they could determine their tribe.
If they were Nuer – the tribe of the former vice president – they "would get killed immediately," ministry of education employee Georget Roro said.
"I heard a lot of gunfire," said Roro, who lives near the barracks where the clashes first erupted on Sunday. "I couldn't see anything because I was hiding but we could hear the firing and the movement of the tanks. It was horrible."

South Sudan's President Salva Kiir blamed the skirmishes a coup attempt by backers of former Vice President Riek Machar, whom he dismissed in July. Eleven people, including seven former ministers, have since been arrested and Machar is being sought for questioning.
Human Rights Watch said Thursday that South Sudanese soldiers fired indiscriminately in highly populated areas of Juba earlier in the week.
But while its origins may lie in a politics, experts are concerned the conflict is rapidly turning into much more.