The United Nations Children's Agency (UNICEF) has revised upward an earlier estimate of the number of children massacred in South Sudan last month, saying the number could be “as many as 129.”

In a statement in mid-May the child rights organization reported at least 19 boys and seven girls were killed, citing witness accounts that the attacks were perpetrated by armed groups aligned with the government army, SPLA.

UNICEF child protection workers and human rights workers have been collecting testimonies from survivors of the attacks who fled to the UN Protection of Civilians site in Bentiu, capital of Unity State.

On Wednesday the UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake said the the violence against children “has reached a new level of brutality.”

“As many as 129 children from Unity State were killed during only three weeks in May. Survivors report that boys have been castrated and left to bleed to death …Girls as young as 8 have been gang raped and murdered… Children have been tied together before their attackers slit their throats … Others have been thrown into burning buildings.”

He concluded, “In the name of humanity and common decency this violence against the innocent must stop.”

Separately, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Rupert Colville, has said that SPLA soldiers and mobilized armed youths clad in civilian clothes perpetrated the atrocities reported in Unity State during a government offensive in May. The UN secretary-general also disclosed that the UN has studied possibilities for relocating ethnic Nuers under the protection of peacekeepers within South Sudanese government controlled-territory to opposition-controlled territory.

Photo: Anthony Lake

Related:

Survivor: 'Children over 12 were killed' (25 May)

Survivor: 'I saw eight children get shot' (25 May)

Dozens of children killed by SPLA armed groups: witnesses (18 May)