Humanitarian team reaches displaced people in South Sudan: UN

Following weeks of fighting and displacement, a humanitarian team has reached about 24,000 displaced people in western areas of South Sudan with child protection, nutrition, water and sanitation support, a UN spokesman told reporters here Monday.

"Aid agencies have also reached neighboring Mundri East and West counties, also in Western Equatoria, to conduct a rapid needs assessment and deliver health supplies and equipment," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The assessment team estimates that around 50,000 people are displaced and urgently need food, water, shelter and healthcare in the two counties, the spokesman said.

"Reaching people in need of assistance in Western Equatoria has been challenging, as most people are hiding in the bush and have deserted the main villages," he said.

Violent clashes and heavy shooting took place in early August between armed tribal groups in Yambio, capital of South Sudan's Western Equatoria State.

The clashes left scores of young people and government soldiers dead, reports said, without giving specific number of the victims.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and forces led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee their homes. Enditem