Heavy flooding in South Sudan has affected and displaced no fewer than 426,000 people, including 185,000 children, as overflowing rivers deluged homes and farms in the impoverished country, the UN’s emergency-response agency disclosed on Tuesday.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, emergency workers have been using canoes and boats to reach people cut off by the deluge.
The UN also warned that more heavy rains and flooding were expected in the coming months.
The downpours ‘have exacerbated the vulnerability of communities, with many people displaced by the floods seeking refuge in churches and schools‘, the agency said.
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In Bentiu, the capital of Unity state, which is home to about a third of the flood-hit population, desperate farmers begged for help, as rising waters triggered by early seasonal rainfall submerged their houses and their land.
‘Even the animals are being affected. All the places we use to graze them in are all flooded with water,’ farmer Gatjiath Pal told reporters.
‘Everywhere is water… and we don’t know when this will end because it is raining every day here,’ he said.
Other villagers said they were frightened of being bitten by snakes as the deluge prompts the reptiles to seek shelter inside buildings.
The heavy downpours have destroyed flimsy thatched huts and killed livestock, a year after record floods affected about 700,000 people.
Around 100,000 of those displaced in last year’s disaster have still not returned home, the UN agency said.
In addition to health facilities being damaged or destroyed by the floods, 113 schools have also been affected, putting children’s education at risk, it warned.
In the meantime, rescue teams are struggling to get aid to some 25,000 people in Warrap, a northwest state plagued by deadly conflict between rival ethnic groups.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK