KAMPALA, Uganda: The United Nations Mission in South Sudan on Monday condemned what it called “the targeted killings of civilians based on their ethnic origins and nationality” in a disputed town that is now under the control of anti-government forces.

In Bentiu, the capital of oil-producing Unity state, more than 200 people sheltering inside a mosque were killed last week after rebel forces seized the town, the mission said in a statement, describing an apparent massacre after rebel forces ousted government troops from the key town.

Some individuals “associated with the opposition” had used an FM radio station to broadcast hate speech, even urging “men from one community to commit vengeful sexual violence against women from another community.” After rebel forces captured Bentiu on April 15, “they searched a number of places where hundreds of South Sudanese and foreign civilians had taken refuge and killed hundreds of the civilians after determining their ethnicity or nationality,” the statement said, citing the accounts of UN human rights investigators on the ground. At Bentiu Hospital several men, women and children from the Nuer ethnic group were killed for hiding and declining to join other Nuers who had come out to cheer the rebels as they seized the town.

Individuals from other South Sudanese communities — as well as people from Darfur — were specifically targeted and killed at the hospital, the statement said. Hundreds more people, who were sheltering at a mosque and a Catholic church, were killed or wounded.