Women and children killed as starving villagers attacked

Starving women and children are being deliberately attacked, in a new wave of violence in warring South Sudan. So far this year, fighting in the central African country has killed more than 2,000 people. More than a quarter of a million have been forced out of their homes in three southern states alone as tribal violence continues four years after a peace deal ended a two-decade civil war. The country is in the grip of a humanitarian crisis, and one and a half million people do not have enough food. It is on the brink of a famine, the United Nations has warned. Most of the fighting has been concentrated in the country's isolated Jonglei state, where thousands of people waiting for a UN emergency food drop in the town of Akobo last month were attacked and 700 tonnes of food lost. “The situation is really bad; we haven’t had food for over two months,” said Nyayual, who fled her village after it was attacked by a rival tribe. “We’ve been surviving by eating grass,” she told Channel 4’s Unreported World show. Nyayual and her family were attacked again when her community was forced to leave Akobo to hunt for food. They were ambushed on a fishing trip, and more than 180 people were killed. She lost seven family members, including two children.

And in a disturbing new trend, more and more women and children are being directly attacked. Nearly all of those killed in the attack against Nyayual’s community were women and children. Nearly all of those killed in the attack against Nyayual’s community were women and children. “They must have planned it for when the men had left the camp. They came after us one by one. We had no-one to defend us,” said Nyayual. Three quarters of people in South Sudan have no access to medical care, and 10 per cent of children there and in Darfur die before their first birthday, a World Health Organization (WHO) official said yesterday. A lack of skilled health workers and drug shortages were putting millions of lives at risk in conflict-affected areas where huge numbers of people have been uprooted, warned Mohammad Abdur Rab, the WHO's representative to Sudan. There are only 10 fully qualified nurses in South Sudan, which has a population of 8 million, he told journalists in Geneva, where the UN health agency is based.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children