Amnesty says UN, South Sudan officials failed to prevent village massacre 

United Nations peacekeepers and authorities in South Sudan failed to act on warnings before armed men attacked a village and killed more than 200 people earlier this year, Amnesty International said in a new report.

In the report, published on Thursday, the rights group said the UN mission, known as UNMISS, knew an attack on a village in Abiemnom, a remote area near the Sudan border, was likely, but did not reinforce its roughly three dozen peacekeepers there until after the March 1 assault.

The findings come as South Sudan heads towards elections next month that many fear could unravel a fragile peace.

“Both the government and UNMISS had sufficient information and time to take more effective preventive action. Their failure to take stronger action cost lives,” said Tigere Chagutah, Amnesty’s director for East and Southern Africa.

Amnesty reported that between 1,000 and 1,500 armed men from the neighbouring Mayom County shot residents, burned homes, and looted part of the hospital. Authorities put the death toll at more than 200, including 130 town residents, 76 security personnel, and seven foreign nationals.

Satellite images showed more than 230 structures were burned, and most victims were buried in two mass graves, according to the report. Amnesty said the attack may have been triggered by tensions over earlier killings of several young men from Mayom County.

UN force cuts

UNMISS spokesperson Priyanka Chowdhury said the mission did its best with limited resources to protect and treat about 2,500 people sheltering at a protected area it set up in anticipation of the attack. Facing budget cuts, it had “concentrated its available capacity on immediate protection of civilians seeking refuge within our base”, she said.

She said the mission had repeatedly asked the national army to send more forces after early warnings, and had known tensions were high since mid-February. UNMISS sent 40 more police after the attack.

Amnesty questioned why they were not deployed sooner, particularly after a similar deadly attack in April 2025.

The UN Security Council (UNSC) renewed UNMISS’s mandate in April, but cut its authorised troop ceiling from 17,000 to 12,000. Protecting civilians is a core task of the mission.

Elections due

South Sudan is due to hold elections on December 22. On Tuesday, African Union envoy Jakaya Kikwete urged the UNSC to help ensure the vote is peaceful.

The International Crisis Group’s Murithi Mutiga warned that a rushed election could be “a final blow” to a 2018 peace agreement that had ended five years of a brutal civil war.

South Sudanese authorities did not respond to two letters from Amnesty requesting information and responses to the report’s preliminary findings.

The rights group called for an independent investigation into the killings and a separate review of the peacekeepers’ response.

“Behind every statistic is a story of devastation, death and destruction,” Chagutah said. “Abiemnom’s survivors deserve truth, justice and assurances that such a tragedy will never happen again.”