A South Sudan community is denied aid as government and opposition blame each other

ABC NewsLiveVideoShowsShopInterest Successfully AddedWe'll notify you here with news aboutTurn on desktop notifications for breaking stories about interest? OffOnStream onA South Sudan community is denied aid as government and opposition blame each otherDisplaced people in a South Sudan village have been denied lifesaving aid by the government, according to eyewitnesses and aid groupsByJOSEPH FALZETTA Associated PressApril 28, 2026, 1:23 AM1:19Patients sit inside a medical clinic where children with malnutrition are treated, in Chuil, Nyirol County, Jonglei State, South Sudan, Friday, April 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Joseph Falzetta)The Associated PressCHUIL, South Sudan -- Displaced people who took refuge from conflict in an isolated South Sudan village were denied lifesaving aid by the government even as deaths there mounted, eyewitnesses and aid groups said.The Associated Press spoke with people who fled to the swamp-encircled community of Nyatim in recent weeks. They described having little food and no clean water in a place so desolate that a Starlink connection was used to call for help.When aid workers reached out to South Sudanese authorities with a request to deliver emergency relief, however, it was denied. Reports that dozens of people had died, including some of apparent starvation, made no difference."It was a ‘no’ from local and national authorities and from the military,” said Yashovardhan, the head of mission for Doctors Without Borders in South Sudan, who goes by one name. “Meanwhile, people are eating leaves and roots to survive.”The U.N. World Food Program, usually reticent about an issue that has simmered for years in South Sudan, also told the AP it had been blocked despite “numerous engagements with both national and local authorities,” according to the agency’s country director, Adham Effendi.It has happened over and over in South Sudan, whose people fought for years for independence from Sudan and then turned on each other. Whatever side that controls aid is accused of withholding it from the other, and civilians suffer.This time, fighting has surged since Riek Machar, a longtime rival of President Salva Kiir, was suspended as first vice president and put under house arrest for alleged subversion last year. The two led opposing forces in a civil war that killed an estimated 400,000 people before a 2018 peace agreement brought them into a fragile unity government.In December, opposition forces backing Machar seized military outposts in Jonglei state. Government forces struck back the following month.On Feb. 7, soldiers reached the outskirts of Lankien town, where an aerial attack days earlier struck a hospital operated by Doctors Without Borders. Residents described artillery fire before soldiers stormed the town in armored vehicles.Thomas Nim was among those who fled. With his pregnant wife, three children and mother, they made their way through swampland, hoping soldiers wouldn't chase them.They and many others soon filled Nyatim, about a day’s walk away.“Some of the most vulnerable, like the elderly and children, ended up in Nyatim because they couldn’t make it any farther," said Nim, a 43-year-old pharmacist.As days passed and people began to die without food or good water, he called for help. But none came.Gatkhor Dual, an opposition official coordinating aid in Jonglei state, blamed county commissioner James Bol Makuei for blocking humanitarian access. Makuei does not want aid to reach people who “support the…

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