A/HRC/31/49 18. One source reported that, in Upper Nile State, after an attack in July 2015 by SPLA, he returned to his village to look for civilians left behind and found in their huts the bodies of a woman and a man, both with physical disabilities and bearing gunshot wounds. Another witness reported that, on 2 September, when he saw SPLA helicopter gunships and amphibian tanks crossing the river, he and several others crossed to the west bank. When he noticed that his children were missing, he returned to the village, where he saw the bodies of six women and of two boys of about seven years of age hanging from a tree. 19. The team also learned of an attack in June 2015 conducted by opposition forces from the Shilluk tribe on Atar Island, Pigi County, in Jonglei State, near the border with Upper Nile State. Shilluk commanders had accused the Dinka community of hiding fighters and munitions to attack the Shilluk positions in Pigi. During the attack, numerous civilians were killed, including six young men and a woman, with their hands tied with ropes made of soft grass. Some of them had been shot, others cut to pieces with a panga (sickle). 20. In Central Equatoria State, in September 2015, witnesses and credible sources reported the killing by SPLA soldiers of civilians who had returned to their village to search for missing relatives or food. In one case, villagers found the body of a woman who had been shot while collecting beans from her field. On two separate occasions, SPLA members shot and killed young men who had returned to their village to retrieve personal belongings, accusing them of belonging to the opposition. 21. In Western Equatoria State, the assessment team confirmed that, in May 2015, SPLA members injured and killed civilians, including children, and looted and destroyed civilian property in Mundri town for three days. SPLA soldiers also surrounded the county prison and opened fire on prison officers, killing one and injuring another. Sources also reported that children and adults drowned while attempting to flee; their bodies were seen floating in the Yei River. Over the three days, between 60 and 110 people were estimated to have died (see S/2015/655, para. 25).4 The killings violate the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of the right to life. In addition, during a non-international armed conflict, directing attacks against civilians not directly participating in hostilities, including in some cases by burning them alive in their homes, is a violation of Additional Protocol II to and common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits all violence directed against civilians, including murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture. 22. Forces affiliated with both sides have singled out civilians on the basis of ethnicity – Nuer, Dinka or Shilluk – for violence or mistreatment. Such discriminatory treatment is a violation of international human rights law, which prohibits discrimination, and common article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and the fundamental guarantees set out in article 4 of Additional Protocol II. 23. The patterns identified in Unity State appear to have been deliberate, ethnicity-based attacks on civilians that were either widespread or systematic. The violence committed there was defined by both its scale and method. The violations described were not random, accidental or isolated acts of violence, but rather required a degree of preparation that the assessment team believes is revealed through the patterns of violent conduct by SPLA, affiliated militia and county commissioners. As described above, killings and other acts of violence against civilians constitute serious violations of international humanitarian law. In addition, such acts, depending on the circumstances and if established before a court of law, may also have violated article 13(2) of Additional Protocol II. 24. The assessment team also found reasonable grounds to believe that civilians in the conflict-affected states had been killed or harmed in reprisal for or response to their 4 South Sudan Protection Cluster, Protection Trends South Sudan, No. 5, April-June 2015, July 2015. 5