A mass grave containing some 75 bodies has been found in South Sudan reported the United Nations today.
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay called on both sides to protect civilian and warned that both political and military leaders could be held accountable for crimes.
In a statement released today, Pillay said,
“Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days. We have discovered a mass grave in Bentiu, in Unity State, and there are reportedly at least two other mass graves in Juba.”
A spokesperson for the former president Riek Machar’s opposition movement, Ravina Shamdasani told Reuters that the bodies in the mass grave were all of Dinka ethnicity.
The latest reports of mass graves come as fears of an ethnically driven civil conflict increase.