Amnesty International says the UN mission in South Sudan, UNMISS, and the country's authorities failed to act on warnings before armed men attacked Abiemnom on March 1. The raid killed more than 200 people. The rights group published its report on Thursday. Abiemnom is a remote area near the border with Sudan.
Amnesty found that both received warnings at least two weeks before the attack, Citizen Digital reported. The warnings said a nearby community was gathering weapons and fighters to avenge an earlier attack. According to Al Jazeera, UNMISS had only about three dozen peacekeepers in the area. It did not reinforce them until after the assault.
According to the report, between 1,000 and 1,500 armed men from neighbouring Mayom County carried out the attack. Citizen Digital reported that the assault lasted four hours. Authorities put the death toll at more than 200: 130 town residents, 76 security personnel and seven foreign nationals. Seven people were killed outside the rear gates of the UNMISS base, where residents had run for safety.
Witnesses said the attackers shot people in their homes and gunned down others as they fled. They also burned homes and the market and looted part of the hospital. Satellite images showed more than 230 structures burned. Most victims were buried in two mass graves.
"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. Chagutah called it one of South Sudan's largest documented massacres since 2020.
UNMISS spokesperson Priyanka Chowdhury said the mission did its best with limited resources. She said it protected and treated about 2,500 people at a protected area it had set up in anticipation of the attack. Facing budget cuts, the mission focused on civilians sheltering in its base, she said. She added that UNMISS had repeatedly asked the national army to send more troops after the early warnings. The mission sent 40 more police after the attack. Amnesty asked why the officers were not deployed sooner, especially after a similar deadly attack in April 2025.
South Sudanese authorities did not reply to two letters from Amnesty seeking their response. Amnesty wants an independent investigation into the killings and a separate review of how the peacekeepers responded. In April, the UN Security Council renewed the UNMISS mandate but cut its troop ceiling from 17,000 to 12,000.
The report comes weeks before South Sudan's elections on December 22. On Tuesday, African Union envoy Jakaya Kikwete urged the Security Council to help keep the vote peaceful. Murithi Mutiga of the International Crisis Group warned that a rushed election could be "a final blow" to the 2018 peace deal that ended five years of civil war.