UNITED NATIONS investigators published a report today that details widespread human rights abuses carried out during South Sudan’s five-year civil war.

The findings, with “sufficient evidence” against both President Salva Kiir’s government forces and rebels, identify more than 40 senior military officials, including three state governors, “who may bear individual responsibility for war crimes.”

“I did not expect to be confronted with so much ritual humiliation and degradation deliberately done for multiple reasons,” said investigatory commission member Andrew Clapham, a professor of international law.

“The suffering and cruelty was worse than anyone could have imagined.”

The report, based on 230 witness statements and other materials, will be presented to the UN human rights council in Geneva next month.

Tens of thousands have been killed in South Sudan since the conflict erupted in December 2013. More than two million people have fled the country. Millions who remain at home face hunger.

The new UN report is an account of the gang-rapes, castrations, ethnic violence and other abuses that have racked much of the country throughout the civil war.

An attempt at a cease-fire in late December was violated within hours.

South Sudan’s government said today that it wanted the names of the accused officials so that it could investigate itself, while also suggesting some allegations were “cut-and-paste and based on hearsay.”

South Sudan’s conflict is splintering into chaos, the new report says. What began as a “power struggle” between Mr Kiir and former vice-president Riek Machar has fractured into an estimated 40 armed groups across the country, with many fighting each other.

But consistent patterns stand out, such as government attacks on unarmed fleeing civilians in areas where no opposition forces were present, the report says.

“There is a clear pattern of ethnic persecution, for the most part by government forces,” Mr Clapham said.

The content of the accusations are horrific. In one case, a man said that his mother had her eyes gouged out with spears after she tried, but failed, to stop a dozen soldiers from raping her granddaughter.

In another, a woman said gunmen forced her 12-year-old son to rape his grandmother or be killed.