Members of a displaced family from South Sudan's Nuer tribe built a shelter on Monday on the outskirts of the capital, Juba.
JUBA, South Sudan — The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday voted to nearly double its peacekeeping contingent force in South Sudan, hoping that a rapid influx of additional international soldiers would help quell the violence threatening to tear the young nation apart.
With tens of thousands of civilians in the country seeking refuge at United Nations compounds, some of which have come under direct threat or attack by armed forces as well, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the move. It will add about 6,000 international troops and police officers to the more than 7,600 peacekeeping forces already on the ground in the nation.
“We have reports of horrific attacks,” Mr. Ban said after the Security Council vote. “Tens of thousands have fled their homes,” he said, adding that “innocent civilians are being targeted because of their ethnicity.”
Mr. Ban raised the prospect that targeted attacks against civilians or United Nations personnel could constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity. But he warned that “this is a political crisis which requires a peaceful, political solution” involving the nation’s clashing leaders.
The vote came hours after the top human rights official at the United Nations, Navi Pillay, expressed deep concern about the escalating conflict in South Sudan, reporting the discovery of at least one mass grave in recent days and the arrests of hundreds of civilians in searches of homes and hotels in the capital of Juba and elsewhere.
The statement by Ms. Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for human rights, added a new level of urgency to the crisis in South Sudan, a fledgling nation that has moved closer to civil war in the past week, fueled by political rivalries that have stoked longstanding ethnic divisions.
Hundreds of people, and possibly many more, have been killed in more than a week of clashes and confusion around the country.
In a statement, Ms. Pillay said, “Mass extrajudicial killings, the targeting of individuals on the basis of their ethnicity and arbitrary detentions have been documented in recent days.”
The statement said officials had “discovered a mass grave in Bentiu, in Unity State, and there are reportedly at least two other mass graves in Juba.” It was the first time that the United Nations had reported the existence of mass graves.
Ms. Pillay expressed “serious concern about the safety of those who have been arrested and are being held in unknown locations, including several hundred civilians who were reportedly arrested during house-to-house searches and from various hotels in Juba.”
It took decades of fighting, negotiation and diplomacy to forge the nation of South Sudan, but little more than a week of violent clashes and political brinkmanship to push it to the precipice.
South Sudan was born in the summer of 2011 with great hope and optimism, cheered on by global powers like the United States that helped shepherd it into existence. The new nation was carved out of Sudan to end one of Africa’s longest and costliest civil wars.
But the rivalry between two of South Sudan’s political leaders, President Salva Kiir and former Vice President Riek Machar, along with the divisions between their ethnic groups, threatens what little cohesion holds the state together.
As diplomats scrambled to get South Sudan’s colliding leaders to sit down for talks, Mr. Kiir’s government warned on Monday that it would march on a pair of strategic cities it had lost to opposing forces. One, Bentiu, lies in a state that is central to South Sudan’s oil production, a linchpin of the economy and the country’s hopes for future development. The other city, Bor, is home to a United Nations base where an estimated 17,000 people have taken shelter from thousands of encroaching militiamen.
On Tuesday, the South Sudanese government said that it had retaken Bor. Col. Philip Aguer, a spokesman for the South Sudanese military, said that government forces were now “in full control” of the city, adding that there were casualties but that he did not yet know the full extent of them. His assertions could not be immediately confirmed independently.
Nick Kulish reported from Juba, South Sudan, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt in Washington and Somini Sengupta in Los Angeles.
