50,000 people in need of aid in wake of recent clashes in South Sudan, UN relief wing says

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Thursday said that its humanitarian partners estimate that around 50,000 people in Mundri, in South Sudan's Western Equatoria State, need assistance following fighting in recent months.

"Humanitarian operations have been hampered by ongoing insecurity and partners continue to engage with all actors to seek the necessary assurances so that they can safely deliver assistance," Farhan Haq, the deputy UN spokesman, said at a daily news briefing here, quoting information from the OCHA.

They are currently distributing essential household items and shelter materials for around 17,500 of the most vulnerable people in Mundri West County, including those whose properties have been looted or burned, Haq said.

Humanitarian partners delivered food assistance in late December 2015 for about 10,000 people in the area, he added.

South Sudan faced worsening humanitarian situation as more than 7 million people are facing food insecurity and an unprecedented outbreak of malaria is affecting almost all regions in the world's youngest country, reports said in late 2015.

More than 2.3 million people have been forced to flee their homes since the conflict began more than two years ago, which has left thousands of the South Sudanese dead.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors 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. Enditem