Geneva: Venezuelan security forces have carried out thousands of extra-judicial killings, sending death squads to murder young men and stage the scenes to make it look like the victims resisted arrest, the United Nations said in a report issued by its human rights chief on Thursday.

Government figures showed that deaths ascribed to criminals resisting arrest numbered 5287 last year and 1569 by May 19 this year. The UN report detailed wide-ranging government abuses targeting political opponents.

Masked members the National Special Action Forces (FAES), an elite commando unit created for anti-gang operations, patrol a slum in Caracas. Credit:AP

Families of 20 men had described how masked men dressed in black from Venezuela's Special Action Forces (FAES) had arrived in black utes without licence plates. In the accounts, the death squads broke into houses, took belongings and assaulted women and girls, sometimes stripping them naked.

"They would separate young men from other family members before shooting them," the report said.