Separately, MSF says 26 aid workers are missing following recent violence in Jonglei state, South Sudan.
Published March 2, 2026
At least 169 people were killed after dozens of gunmen attacked a town in South Sudan’s Ruweng administrative area, local officials said.
A group of unidentified youths from Mayom County, in neighboring Unity State, broke into Abiemnhom County on Sunday, the area’s Information Minister, James Monyluak Mijok, said on Monday.
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Of the dead, 82 were children, women and the elderly, he told the Reuters news agency.
Fifty other people suffered “major and minor injuries” in the attack, he added.
“I would like to sadly inform you that the dead included the county commissioner and the chief executive,” Mijok said.
Elizabeth Achol, health minister in northern Ruweng, told the AFP news agency by phone that the 169 bodies were buried in a mass grave on Monday.
Mijok told AFP that “the (death) toll may rise further if more bodies are discovered.”
The official earlier told Anadolu Agency that the fighting lasted three to four hours, before the army was able to expel the attackers from the area. Abiemnhom authorities were now in full control, he claimed.
“The Government of Ruweng Administrative Area (GRAA) condemns in the strongest terms this barbaric action and this policy of extermination. This human slaughter amounts to genocide and cannot be tolerated,” Mijok told Anadolu.
He called on the Unity State government to bring the culprits to justice.
The United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) on Sunday expressed alarm over the increase in violence in Abiemnhom in the past 48 hours and said 23 people were injured in an attack there.
“In response to the deteriorating security situation, peacekeepers are temporarily sheltering more than 1,000 civilians within the UNMISS base in the area and providing emergency medical care to the injured,” UNMISS added in a statement.
Humanitarian staff ‘missing’ after violence in Jonglei
The violence highlights concerns, including those of the UN, of increasing instability since the arrest of former first vice president Riek Machar a year ago.
President Salva Kiir signed a peace deal with Machar in 2018 to end five years of civil war, which killed about 400,000 people.
But implementation of the agreement has been slow and opposing forces have frequently clashed over disagreements over how to share power.
On Monday, Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French initials MSF, said 26 of its members were missing after a spike in violence in Jonglei state in recent weeks.
“Twenty-six of the 291 MSF colleagues working in Lankien and Pieri remain missing following the recent violence, and we have lost contact with them amid the current insecurity,” he said in a statement.
MSF has suspended medical services in Lankien and Pieri, both in Jonglei, where major clashes have occurred between government and opposition forces since December.
An MSF facility in Lankien was hit by a government airstrike on February 3, the NGO said.
“Many of our staff were forced to flee the violence along with their families. Several are now displaced and sheltered in remote areas with little access to food, water or basic services,” the statement added.
South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has been beset by civil war, poverty and massive corruption since its creation in 2011.
