ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Stopping short of describing deadly fighting in South Sudan as genocide, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday blasted the new nation’s ethnic and political leaders as creating the same kind of violence their people sought to escape when they voted three years ago to break away from Sudan.

Kerry came to Africa in large part to broker an agreement among the African Union — and eastern Africa states in particular — to send peacekeepers to South Sudan as quickly as possible to stanch the brutal killings that have largely broken down along ethnic lines and threaten to throw the country into outright civil war. It’s estimated that thousands of people have been killed since the fighting began nearly six months ago, and about 1 million others have fled their homes.