Updated

The top United Nations humanitarian official says some South Sudanese people are afraid to return home despite a truce signed last week.

Valerie Amos, the U.N's emergency relief coordinator, on Tuesday visited Malakal, the capital of an oil-producing state where the monitoring group Satellite Sentinel Project says war crimes have been committed.

Amos said the people she spoke to said "they'd completely lost faith" and wanted to be relocated to other parts of South Sudan or even out of the country. Thousands of people there now live in camps for the internally displaced.

South Sudan, which gained independence in 2011, has been hit by violence since mid-December as government forces try to put down a rebellion led by a former deputy president.

Some fighting has been along ethnic lines.