Fire, death blight remote part of S. Sudan

Women and children wait to be treated at a hospital Friday in Leer, South Sudan.
Women and children wait to be treated at a hospital Friday in Leer, South Sudan.

LEER, South Sudan -- Bodies stuffed in wells. Houses burned down. Children playing on military hardware. Infants showing the skeletal outlines of severe hunger.

These are the scenes from a remote part of South Sudan -- Leer -- where Doctors Without Borders has just begun feeding severely malnourished children about three months after the aid group's hospital was destroyed in violence that has been ripping apart the country since December.

One child taken to the clinic by a mother hoping for lifesaving aid instead died the next day. That and other scenes of desperation were recently filmed by an Associated Press journalist.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council on Monday that he visited South Sudan this month in order to "sound the alarm about the violence and the risk of catastrophic famine." Ban warned that if the fighting continues, half of South Sudan's 12 million people will be displaced, starving or dead by the end of the year.

Government troops led by President Salva Kiir and rebel forces loyal to former Vice President Riek Machar battled each other on Sunday, only two days after Kiir and Machar met in Ethiopia to sign a cease-fire deal, the second peace treaty of the conflict. The first one fell apart soon after it was signed.

More than 1.3 million people have fled their homes because of the violence. Many have spent months living in what is referred to as "the bush," the untamed wild filled with dirty water and disease.

People who fled Leer, a town of 20,000 in Unity state, are just starting to return to their homes, many of whichwere burned out or looted. Seasonal rains are starting to pour down, forcing families without a roof to cram in with neighbors or rough it outside.

"To be living in a place where you don't even have a roof is awful," said Sarah Maynard, a Doctors Without Borders project coordinator. "With the rains coming it will only get worse. People need help here."

Doctors Without Borders re-opened its clinic doors last Thursday to a flood of residents seeking help for malaria, measles, diarrhea, respiratory tract infections -- and hunger. The group screened 600 children and found 50 faced the most dire level of malnutrition.

Nyagaaw Biel Dhoar took 2-year-old son Jacob Rit Wadaar to the clinic in the hopes that the medical personnel could save him. She tried to keep breastfeeding him as he lay dying in her arms, but it was too late. Jacob died the next morning.

World leaders like the U.N. secretary-general and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry worked to get Kiir and Machar to agree to the latest cease-fire in part because the aid community says that if residents don't return home this month and plant crops before the rains truly set in, the country will have no food for its citizens.

"Hunger and malnutrition are already widespread. If this planting window is missed, there will be a real risk of famine. That is why we are calling for 30 days of tranquility backed by both sides. I am troubled by the accusations by both sides of breaches of the cease-fire already," Ban told the Security Council.

Ban said South Sudan still needs $781 million for aid operations this year. A donor conference is being held in Norway next week.

Violence has upturned the rhythm of daily life. Residents showed a reporter how garbage and corpses fill one of Leer's communal wells.

Myabani Nhial, a mother of 10, traded food staples like sorghum before the fighting broke out. Although her home and grain store have been reduced to a burned-out shell, she keeps returning in the hope of finding something that might have escaped the looting fighters and their fires.

"This was my home," Nhial said. "It was burned by the soldiers. They killed three of my children and they took all the sorghum and whatever we had in our house. Now we are left to die without any food, water or shelter. They have taken away everything."

Information for this article was contributed by Jason Straziuso of The Associated Press.

A Section on 05/14/2014

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