Two weeks of warning, three dozen peacekeepers: Amnesty says the UN and South Sudan saw the Abiemnom massacre coming and failed to stop it

Amnesty International has accused both the United Nations and South Sudan’s government of failing to prevent a massacre in the world’s youngest country that both had seen coming.

In a report released on Thursday, The Abiemnom Massacre: Inaction and Impunity in South Sudan, the rights group says between 1,000 and 1,500 armed men from neighbouring Mayom County stormed Abiemnom, in Unity State near the border with Sudan, early on the morning of 1 March. The assault lasted about four hours. Residents were shot, homes were burned, the market was destroyed and part of the hospital was looted of medicines and mattresses.

South Sudanese authorities put the toll at no fewer than 213 dead: 130 residents, 76 members of the security forces and seven foreign nationals. Satellite images reviewed by Amnesty show more than 230 structures burned. Most of the dead were buried in two mass graves.

Who knew, and when?

Amnesty says the warning signs were public. Community members reported that men in Mayom County were gathering weapons and fighters, and the Unity State information minister acknowledged the threat in the media about two weeks before the attack.

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

The report, based on 82 interviews, satellite imagery and verified photos and videos, says the UN mission judged an attack likely but did not reinforce its roughly three dozen peacekeepers at its temporary base in Abiemnom. About 1,000 people had already crowded into the base 48 hours before the gunmen came. Seven of the killings Amnesty documented happened just outside the base’s rear gates.

The mission sent 40 more police only after the attack. Amnesty asks why they were not sent earlier, given that Abiemnom had already suffered a similar deadly raid in April 2025.

What does the UN say?

UNMISS spokesperson Priyanka Chowdhury said the mission had known tensions were high since mid-February and repeatedly asked South Sudan’s army to send more forces. With budget cuts and fewer personnel, she said, it focused on protecting and treating about 2,500 people in a protected area it had set up before the attack. Her statement did not directly address the timing of the reinforcements.

South Sudan’s government did not respond to two Amnesty letters seeking comment on the findings.

Why did it happen?

Amnesty says the attack may have been triggered by unresolved killings of several young men from Mayom County, and fed by the fact that no one was punished for the earlier raid. The area has seen repeated cycles of revenge violence over land and cattle.

When Amnesty researchers visited on 28 March, only a handful of residents remained. Survivors said they would not go home without assurances that they would be protected.

Why does this matter beyond South Sudan?

Abiemnom is a test of what UN peacekeeping can still do as its money shrinks. Protecting civilians is a core task of UNMISS, one of the UN’s largest missions, yet the Security Council cut its authorised troop ceiling by almost a third when it renewed the mandate in April. The mission’s own explanation for Abiemnom is, in effect, that it no longer had enough people to be everywhere.

Australia has had a small Defence Force contingent serving with UNMISS since 2011.

The timing is also stark. South Sudan is due to hold elections on 22 December, the first since it became independent in 2011. The country’s 2018 peace deal ended five years of civil war, but renewed fighting between government forces and opposition groups has strained it this year, and analysts have warned that a rushed vote could break it.