CHUIL, South Sudan (AP) — 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.

People say aid has been weaponized for years

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.

Opposition and authorities blame each other

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 opposition,” Dual said, especially when they are near government-held areas.

Makuei acknowledged that access to Nyatim had been restricted but added that estimates of its evacuee-swollen population — 30,000, according to Doctors Without Borders — were exaggerated. He accused South Sudan’s main opposition group, known by its initials SPLM-IO, of holding civilians in Nyatim to attract aid and secure a foothold near the county seat of government.

Nim, the pharmacist, said there were no opposition forces in the area.

Concerns about aid diversion are not without precedent. Armed groups in South Sudan, including the military, have a long history of diverting humanitarian supplies for military purposes. During recent fighting in Jonglei, fighters looted more than two dozen humanitarian-run health facilities, according to the U.N.

Doctors Without Borders said it first reached out for help to Nyatim on Feb. 22. It asked again on March 3 after hearing reports of deaths. At the end of March, the medical charity issued a statement drawing attention to its efforts.

Delivering aid in South Sudan is never easy. Infrastructure is poor. River traffic, where available, has been attacked. Clearance from authorities is required.

Meanwhile, the humanitarian crisis has deepened. In March, over half of the more than 1,000 children screened by Doctors Without Borders in Chuil, a community where South Sudan’s government has allowed humanitarian access to enter, were acutely malnourished.

Aid workers have been overwhelmed. In February, Doctors Without Borders began expanding a four-bed facility, first to 60 beds, then 80. It is now growing to 100.

Other people are giving up on remote Nyatim and going home to ruins.

“People are returning to their homes,” said one of them, Koang Pajok. “There was no food and shelter.”

The World Food Program turns to airdrops

Unable to reach the area by road or river, the World Food Program has airdropped 415 metric tons of food to Chuil since March, country director Effendi said.

But as civilians come seeking assistance, so do young men wielding Kalashnikovs. Some people worry that could make Chuil a target.

On a morning in April, a plane circling overhead drew anxious onlookers.

“It’s a surveillance plane,” said Gal Wai Tut, who had arrived days earlier with his wife and newborn child. He recalled seeing a similar plane over Lankien on the day he said a December airstrike killed at least 11 civilians.

Don’t gather in one place, an older man advised, saying a crowd is more likely to be targeted.

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