A United Nations report has said that soldiers and groups allied to the government in South Sudan have been allowed to rape women in the conflict-ridden country as a form of wages, reported AFP. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein said rape has been used systematically in the country torn apart by civil war, and that it has become “an instrument of terror and a weapon of war”. Between April and September 2015, the UN investigation recorded more than 1,300 reports of rapes in South Sudan's Unity State alone. However, Al Jazeera reported that South Sudan presidential spokesman, Ateny Wek Ateny, denied that groups allied to the government had committed humans rights violations.

The report also stated that crimes including burning children and disabled people alive showed that the civil war in the country is “one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world”. The UN human rights office said civilians suspected of supporting the opposition, including children, being have been burned alive, suffocated in shipping containers, hanged from trees and cut to pieces. In one incident, the Sudan People’s Liberation Army rounded up 60 cattle keepers and locked them in a container in a church compound. Only one survived suffocation, AP reported.

Between November 2014 and 2015, there were an estimated 10,553 civilian deaths. According to the report, “state actors” bear most responsibility for these crimes. South Sudan has been in the midst of civil war since December 2013, after which tens of thousands have been killed and more than 2.3 million displaced.