The United Nations Mission in South Sudan or UNMISS Human Rights Division issued a 33-page report that documented armed opposition forces killing hundreds of civilians on April 15 2014 after they retook Bentiu, Unity State from government troops.
The report also documented the killing of dozens of people by a mob of armed men who attacked the peacekeeping mission’s protection of civilians’ site outside Bor, Jonglei state two days later.
The report based on collected physical evidence and interviews of one 142 sources concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that at least 353 civilians were murdered and another 250 wounded in the two attacks.
The report found that in both Bentiu and Bor, victims were deliberately targeted on the basis of their ethnicity, nationality or perceived support for one of the parties to the conflict.
The report pointed out that opposition forces killed 287 civilians at a mosque in the Kalibalak area of Bentiu, many were Sudanese traders with their families targeted on the basis of their Darfuri origins and some 19 civilians killed at Bentiu Civil Hospital that same day.
It continued that on April 17, a mob of mostly men between 20 and 40 years old marched to the UNMISS compound outside Bor with rampage of killing, looting and abductions of IDPs, demanding the expulsion of youths of Nuer ethnicity, leading to the dead of at least 47 IDPs.
The report called on all parties to the crisis to immediately end all fighting, halt abuses and gross violations of human rights and respect the inviolability of United Nations personnel and premises.