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SOUTH SUDAN: 250,000 kids ‘at risk of imminent death’ due to starvation, UN says

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SOUTH SUDAN: 250,000 kids 'at risk of imminent death' due to starvation, UN says

The executive director of the UN children’s agency (UNICEF) Henrietta H Fore has sounded a note of warning claiming that no less than 250,000 children in war-torn South Sudan are at risk of imminent death due to severe malnutrition.

The UN official made the call on Friday after a two-day visit to some of the areas most affected by the country’s civil war, now in its fifth year.

“It’s serious here in South Sudan,” she told Al Jazeera from South Sudan’s capital, Juba.

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“We are very worried that a quarter of a million children are going to be facing death this year before July.

“The violence has meant that many of the farmers have run away from their fields,” said Fore. “They are afraid to farm, and as a result there is just no food in the markets.”

Reports say the war which broke out in 2013 after President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of plotting a coup, has devastated agricultural production in the East African country.

 

 

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