AN 18-month-old boy lies motionless on a dirty hospital bed deep in the conflict zone of South Sudan, a bullet wound in his leg – another newly-orphaned victim in the world’s newest country.
“When they arrived, they started shooting everyone in the area – elder, child and mother,” said his grandmother Nyayual at the hospital in the opposition-held town of Akobo, eastern Jonglei state.
The bullet that hit the little boy also killed his mother – Nyayual’s daughter. AFP is using only her first name for fear of reprisals.
She said government forces attacked their village.
“We ran away ... They were still shooting at us,” she said. “This failed government has no way to resolve things.”
South Sudan gained independence in 2011 but soon descended into civil war between two rival generals, Salva Kiir and Riek Machar.
A 2018 power-sharing deal brought relative peace, with Kiir as president and Machar his deputy, but the agreement has unravelled over the past year.
Fighting in Jonglei state between the army under Kiir and forces loyal to Machar has displaced some 280,000 people since December, according to the United Nations.
The hospital in Akobo – a ramshackle collection of buildings, most without doors or windows – has only one surgeon, now overwhelmed.
More than 40 young men were being treated for gunshot wounds.
In one ward, an elderly woman lay, her face turned away from the family around her. She was shot by soldiers in both legs, they said. They carried her for days before finding a car that agreed to bring them to the hospital.
The military declined to comment on the claims. The Jonglei state government’s information minister, Nyamar Lony Thichot Ngundeng, said she did not have information about the incidents.
However, she added: “If you get injured during the crossfire, that is counted as a crossfire, it is not intentional.”
Unicef says more than half the displaced are children, some fleeing for the second or third time.
Around 825,000 people are at risk of acute malnutrition across three of South Sudan’s states: Jonglei, Unity and Eastern Equatoria.
Akeer Amou, 33, fled Jonglei for an informal camp on the banks of the White Nile, where she gave birth to her fifth child.
Not on any maps, the place is known only as Yolakot, meaning riverside, but hundreds of women and children now live under the shade of its trees, waiting for help. There were at least three other newborns among them.
Amou named her child Riak, meaning “disaster”.
She does not know why the conflict is happening, but she knows her son will bear the brunt.
The mothers spend the days foraging for fruit, nuts and water lily seeds, while children splash in the river’s murky waters.
Most are desperately hungry.
A local official said there were roughly 6,700 people waiting for food, but there was no sign of any aid.
In Jonglei’s state capital Bor, doctors try to serve the massive influx of displaced people with rapidly dwindling supplies.
David Tor, acting director of the town’s hospital, pointed to a mother who had been forced to deliver in nearby swamp land. He had managed to reduce the newborn’s fever, a rare bit of good news.
The mother had fled Fangak, a town to the north, where last May, the only healthcare facility for more than 100,000 people – run by Doctors Without Borders – was attacked by helicopter gunships and drones, which completely destroyed its pharmacy and all its medical supplies.
“Because of the increase in the number of people who need services, we have run out of almost everything,” said Tor. “At a certain point, we may lose patients.”
Ngundeng said the hospital would receive supplies.
“I would say it’s enough until the hospital or the ministry of health says otherwise,” she said.
South Sudan is ranked the most corrupt country in the world by monitoring group Transparency International.
Billions in oil revenue have been stolen by the elite, according to the UN, and the country relies on international donors for 80% to 90% of its healthcare needs.
Fresh conflict is creating another generation of children with few prospects for a better life. The World Bank estimates 70% are not in school.
In the displacement camp in Lake State, south of Bor, where some 35,000 people have recently arrived, mothers queued to sign up their children for an emergency education and psycho-social programme run by the Norwegian Refugee Council.
It has already registered 2,000 children.
Some of those in the queue may never escape this life. — AFP
Lost childhood
Elderly members of the Nuer community, uprooted by the conflict in Jonglei State, attend a community health session amid shortages of medical supplies in the POC IDP Camp in Bor, Jonglei State.
A worker sits atop sacks of food aid in a hangar where supplies are piling up because deliveries are halted due to insecurity from the conflict, at a World Food Programme warehouse in Bor.
Indian peacekeepers serving with the United Nations standing guard next to a young boy as they patrol outside local government offices in Akobo.
Nyikopi (centre), recently displaced by conflict in her hometown and who gave birth during the journey, attempts to receive a vaccination shot for her newborn named Jonglei amid shortages of medical supplies at the Bor State Hospital.
Families gathering under the shade of a tree at an informal site near Mingkaman. — Photos: AFP
