RENK (SOUTH SUDAN) (TIP): When fighting erupted in Sudan, Rosa Yusif Elias escaped on foot with her seven children over the border to her homeland, South Sudan, where she thought they would be safe.
Instead, they have been stranded for weeks in an isolated camp that has been overwhelmed by the sudden arrival of tens of thousands of people fleeing the violence next door.
“This place is full of flies and snakes, and the food is not good,” said Elias, who fled Sudan after fighting erupted between the army and a powerful paramilitary force on April 15.
She said children were coming down with diarrhoea. “In the last few days, three children have died in this camp.”
The influx adds to an already dire situation in South Sudan, a troubled country that has struggled with war, famine and natural disasters since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011. Those arriving have turned to aid groups already under strain trying to provide basic services in a country where two-thirds of the population rely on humanitarian assistance to survive.
The scene near the border is grim, with children suffering malnutrition, tensions over limited resources, and families sleeping in the open as the camp’s population climbs by the day.
“We are suffering in this camp, children are dying,” said Santuke Danga, who is stuck at the camp near Renk, a frontier town that has become the epicentre of this latest crisis.
“We queue up in order to get porridge for the children, at the water point people fight, (there is) no security and sometimes hyenas come.”
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said over 100,000 people have crossed from Sudan since fighting there began about two months ago — an average of more than 1,000 per day. Some arrive on donkeys, too weak to walk any further. Children have been particularly affected, dehydrated and malnourished after the long journey overland through the harsh country. At a health clinic in the camp, a long queue stretched out the door.
ony Puk waited with his one-and-a-half-year-old girl to see a doctor. She was admitted for severe acute malnutrition, a life-threatening condition. “The child felt sick earlier, and there was no medication in Khartoum because there was fighting. That is why he is malnourished,” the father of two told AFP. “We took two weeks to arrive here, and on the road, she was only taking water and milk from her mother.” Asunta Agok, from UNHCR, said a number of people had died upon arriving, including an infant. “The child had a very short illness, and there was no medical team on the ground to provide medical assistance,” she told AFP.(AFP)