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Number of displaced S. Sudanese continues to rise: UN Mission

Xinhua, July 8, 2015 Adjust font size:

As South Sudan marks the 4th anniversary of its independence this week, the numbers of people in protection sites and who have been displaced by the conflict continue to rise, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said here Tuesday.

"The UN Mission in the country (UNMISS) says that the estimated number of civilians seeking safety in six of its protection sites has now topped 150,000," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing.

"Meanwhile, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) says that more than 730,000 South Sudanese are refugees and some 1.5 million have become internally displaced," he said.

UNHCR said that recent weeks have seen an escalation in violence in Unity and Upper Nile states, with heavy fighting forcing tens of thousands of people to flee to the bush and swamplands -- areas that are difficult to reach.

The UN agency also said that assistance programs across the region are severely underfunded -- with an inter-agency appeal is only funded at 13 percent.

"UNMISS has condemned a fatal shooting of an internally displaced person that took place in the Bentiu protection of civilian site on Sunday," he said. "According to eyewitnesses, two armed men in military uniforms were seen inside the site and fired the shot that killed the displaced person."

"The UN Mission says that any attack on a protection-of- civilians site constitutes a direct assault against the United Nations and may constitute a war crime," he said.

South Sudan was officially declared independent on July 9, 2011, following a referendum in which around 99 percent of the southerners voted for its secession from Sudan.

South Sudan's civil war and violence started in mid-December 2013. Political efforts so far have failed to bring an end to the conflict, and the outlook for the affected populations remains grim. Endite