adminGeneva — Up to 1,000 refugees from war-torn South Sudan are fleeing to Ethiopia each day, many of them on the brink of death, the UN said on Tuesday.
A massive 95 percent of the arrivals are also women and children, added the UN, citing witnesses saying that both boys and men have been forcibly recruited by armed men or killed along the way.
Since fighting erupted in December, refugees have been “arriving at a rate of 800-1,000 per day, and they are arriving on their last legs,” Melissa Fleming, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, said in Geneva.
If they had not received immediate help, “these people would be dead. They were really, really in bad shape,” she said, following a recent visit to the region.
More than 95,000 South Sudanese refugees have crossed into Ethiopia since violence erupted in the world’s youngest nation last December between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and fighters loosely allied to former vice president Riek Machar.
Nearly 200,000 more have sought refuge in Sudan, Uganda and Kenya, while more than 800,000 are displaced inside South Sudan, according to UN figures.
Some of those arriving in Ethiopia’s Gambella region had walked up to three weeks to reach the border, Fleming said, adding that most were “very hungry, [with] up to 37 percent malnourished and needing emergency attention.”
More than 4,000 malnourished children were receiving nutrition supplements, as were at least 3,500 lactating mothers, said Fleming.
Thousands of people have been killed in the violence that has also taken on an ethnic dimension, pitting Kiir’s Dinka tribe against Machar’s Nuer people. — Al Jazeera
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