UN peacekeepers failed to protect civilians before South Sudan massacre, Amnesty says

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — United Nations peacekeepers and South Sudanese authorities failed to take adequate action despite warnings weeks before insurgents raided a village and killed more than 200 people earlier this year, Amnesty International said in a report released Thursday.

The rights group said that the peacekeeping mission, known by the acronym UNMISS, knew that an attack on Abiemnom, a remote area near the border with Sudan, was likely but failed to reinforce the roughly three dozen peacekeepers based there until after it occurred.

Between 1,000 and 1,500 armed men from neighboring Mayom County carried out the March 1 attack , shooting residents, burning homes and looting part of the hospital, Amnesty said.

The death toll was at least 213, according to authorities, including 130 town residents, 76 security personnel and seven foreign nationals.

“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, an Amnesty regional director.

UNMISS spokesperson Priyanka Chowdhury said in a statement that the mission did its best with limited resources to provide protection and medical care to the roughly 2,500 people who sheltered at a protected area established in anticipation of the attack.

Facing budget cuts and reduced personnel, she said that the mission "concentrated its available capacity on immediate protection of civilians seeking refuge within our base rather than dispersing limited forces across tasks they could not safely sustain simultaneously.”

The March assault came amid renewed fighting between government forces and an array of opposition groups, undermining a 2018 agreement that ended five years of civil war. The area has experienced cycles of retaliatory violence linked to land access and cattle raiding.

Amnesty said that the March attack may have been triggered by unresolved killings of several young men from neighboring Mayom County in Abiemnom.

The investigation drew on interviews with 82 people, including survivors, witnesses and medical workers, along with satellite imagery and verified photographs and videos.

Survivors described residents being shot in their homes or while trying to flee. Some were killed at close range after being captured or wounded, Amnesty said. Government security forces and armed residents tried to repel the attackers but were overwhelmed.

One mother of seven told researchers that attackers shot her daughter-in-law as she held her youngest child. Amnesty withheld interviewees’ real names to protect them.

Satellite imagery showed more than 230 structures destroyed by fire. Most victims were buried in two mass graves, according to the report.

Chowdhury acknowledged that UNMISS was aware tensions had been high since mid-February and that people sought protection at its base in the days leading up to the attack.

She said that UNMISS repeatedly asked the national army to deploy additional security forces to the area after receiving early warnings of an attack.

The mission sent 40 additional police personnel afterward. Amnesty questioned why those reinforcements hadn't been deployed earlier, particularly after a similar deadly attack in April 2025.

Chowdhury’s statement didn't explicitly address why the reinforcements were sent after the attack rather than before.

South Sudanese authorities didn't respond to two letters seeking information and comment on the findings, Amnesty said. Government spokesperson Ateny Wek Ateny also didn't respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The group called for an independent investigation into the killings and a separate review of the peacekeepers’ response, with both sets of findings made public.

Protecting civilians is a central task of UNMISS. The U.N. Security Council renewed its mandate in April while reducing its authorized troop ceiling from 17,000 to 12,000.