Writhing in agony on the dirt floor of his hut, Bob Wol traced the recent gunshot wounds on his thigh and back with his fingers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was trying to get food and my government tried to kill me,\u201d the 29-year-old told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been almost 25 years since more than 1 million people were on the brink of starvation in southern Sudan, a crisis captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a vulture poised near a starving little girl. Today, people in what was known as the \u201cfamine triangle\u201d say the situation has only deteriorated.<\/p>\n
\u201cBefore, only the hunger was killing you,\u201d said Lony Toang, who survived the earlier famine in Ayod County. \u201cNow it\u2019s worse because we have hunger and we\u2019re killing people.\u201d<\/p>\n
As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. The UN warns that if fighting continues famine will spread to several places across the country by early next year and almost half the population of 11 million will be severely food insecure.<\/p>\n
During a visit this month to Ayod County, the AP spoke with some who were already hungry.<\/p>\n
In a desperate attempt to feed his wife and five small children, who hadn\u2019t eaten in days, Wol went in search of help. After six days of walking, eating fruit picked from trees, he reached government-held Ayod town, where he said soldiers wary of rebels ambushed him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I got shot I was just thinking that I didn\u2019t want to die before I got food for my family,\u201d Wol said, staring despondently at the floor. \u201cWe\u2019re locked in here and we can\u2019t get out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayod is one of two counties in South Sudan currently in catastrophe, with 8,000 people experiencing extreme hunger. During a visit to Ayod\u2019s rebel-held headquarters in Jiech town, dozens of residents said that without food aid they would starve to death.<\/p>\n
Remote, barren and sealed off from the rest of the nation, the county of roughly 160,000 people in Jonglei State has been devastated by fighting.<\/p>\n
South Sudan\u2019s army rejected people\u2019s accounts of brutality as negative propaganda by the opposition, saying it is not government policy to prevent civilians from reaching aid.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat sense does it make for the government forces to kill its own citizens looking for food?\u201d said Col. Domic Chol Santo, the army\u2019s acting spokesman.<\/p>\n
Yet across South Sudan allegations are rife of both the government and the rebels using food as a weapon of war.<\/p>\n
On a visit last month to the Equatoria region, the AP spoke with people in Yei and Lainya towns who said the army was arbitrarily detaining, raping and killing civilians trying to cultivate their fields, amid suspicions that they were part of the opposition.<\/p>\n
Lainya resident Mary Yata said four government soldiers in September tried to steal cassava when she was tending her fields. \u201cThey said if I didn\u2019t leave now they\u2019d kill me,\u201d she said. Days later she saw the soldiers selling her cassava at the market.<\/p>\n
Advocacy groups are calling on the warring sides to stop holding South Sudan\u2019s people hostage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe civilians are caught in a deadly circle and they\u2019re certainly not being protected,\u201d said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International\u2019s senior crisis response adviser.<\/p>\n
With nowhere to go, Ayod residents said they will continue relying on handouts by the UN\u2019s World Food Program.<\/p>\n
At a food distribution last week, the desperation was palpable as 11,000 malnourished people poured in from the surrounding bush. Some had walked overnight to receive bags of sorghum, beans and cooking oil.<\/p>\n
Although the WFP has increased its distributions in Ayod from every 90 days to every 60 days, aid workers on the ground say the food is enough for just one month.<\/p>\n
\u201cI saw old people collecting grains that fell on the ground out of the bags,\u201d said Ewnetu Yohannes, team leader for Catholic Relief Services, the organization overseeing the distribution. \u201cIf WFP wasn\u2019t here it\u2019d be a catastrophe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wiping breast milk from the cheek of her 10-month-old daughter, Jiech resident Elizabeth Nyakoda blamed the hunger on the years of fighting.<\/p>\n
Unable to register in time for the aid distribution and too scared to cultivate her fields, the 35-year-old mother of five has been begging her family for food.<\/p>\n
She rubbed her hand over her daughter\u2019s protruding rib cage as the baby began to wail. Shrugging her shoulders, Nyakoda looked away.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the child cries from hunger, what can I do for her?\u201d she said. \u201cThere are no options.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Egypt Independent)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Writhing in agony on the dirt floor of his hut, Bob Wol traced the recent gunshot wounds on his thigh and back with his fingers. \u201cI was trying to get food and my government tried to kill me,\u201d the 29-year-old told The Associated Press. It\u2019s been almost 25 years since more than 1 million people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7863],"tags":[29674,29672,29673],"class_list":["post-61481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english-section","tag-lony-toang","tag-south-sudan","tag-starvation"],"yoast_head":"\n