JOHANNESBURG: Some 100,000 people in South Sudan have been cut off from vital aid by fighting between government forces, rebels and rival tribes, the UN has warned.

The South Sudanese army is threatened by a rebellion from a militia led by the politician David Yau Yau in the sprawling Jonglei state, while new clashes have erupted between the rival Lou Nuer and Murle tribes.

The violence has left tens of thousands of people hiding in unsafe, malaria-infested swamps and sparked fears that the world’s newest country could descend into civil war. It is flooded with weapons after decades of conflict with Sudan before it gained independence two years ago. Valerie Amos, the UN’s under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, said: “I am alarmed by the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Pibor county in Jonglei, where an estimated 100,000 civilians have been cut off from life-saving assistance as a result of fighting between state and non-state armed actors, and the recent resurgence of inter-communal clashes.

“The fighting is threatening the lives of ordinary people and has reduced the ability of humanitarian organisations to provide urgently needed help ... as long as the fighting continues, delivery of aid will be limited and we will not get help to those who need it.”

The UN does not have enough helicopters to deliver aid to Jonglei where overland travel is impossible in the rainy reason. It has also expressed concern over an outbreak of measles among children, which can be fatal in such conditions.

Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF), one of the few aid groups operating in Jonglei, said more than 120,000 people had been forced to flee clashes between the army and Yau Yau rebels. Its teams have treated hundreds of wounded and are attempting to reach thousands more hiding in the bush. Raphael Gorgeu, MSF’s head of mission, said: “We are currently treating, with the support of the ministry of health, 176 wounded, including 128 gunshot wounds, and so far we have performed 34 surgical interventions. We are expecting more to come. Our next priority is to ensure that patients in need of post-operative care and follow-up are flown to our larger MSF projects in Lankien, Nasir and Leer. Seven have already been moved.”

The UN has not published any casualty figures for the Jonglei fighting despite a large presence of peacekeepers. Critics believe it does not want to embarrass the government.

South Sudan accuses its northern neighbour of supplying Yau Yau with weapons. Diplomats say the claims are credible but South Sudan’s army is also fuelling dissent with abuses such as rape, killings and torture committed during a state disarmament campaign.

Tribal conflict has worsened the situation, killing more than 1,600 people in Jonglei since South Sudan’s secession. A UN source told Reuters that armed Lou Nuer youth had attacked several Murle villages in the past two weeks. Fighters loyal to Yau Yau, who is popular with his Murle tribe, had come to help retaliate.

Separate tribal clashes were also reported in Unity state, which contains several oilfields. In one incident attackers apparently torched a hut in a village with a woman and three children inside.

Earlier this month a group of US-based activists who supported South Sudan’s independence warned that the country faced an “increasingly perilous fate” and was sliding towards “instability, conflict and a protracted government crisis” due in part to rampant official corruption and abuse of power.

John Ashworth, a church adviser who has lived in South Sudan for three decades, played down suggestions that the fighting could escalate into civil war. “Despite the many deaths and the suffering associated with David Yau Yau’s rebellion, it is nevertheless only a relatively limited insurgency in one small part of the huge new nation of South Sudan by a single disaffected leader and his supporters,” he said.

“Although it is destabilising a state in which only last year the six ethnic communities signed a peace agreement to resolve their differences, at this stage there is little sign that it might spread to other states.”

By arrangement with the Guardian