Doctors Without Borders (MSF) and the World Food Programme on Friday denounced restrictions on humanitarian access in South Sudan as fighting has intensified between rival factions.
Fighting erupted in Jonglei state, north of the capital Juba, in late December, in the latest clashes between factions loyal to President Salva Kiir and his long-time rival, Riek Machar, displacing at least 180,000 people according to the United Nations.
MSF is the only health provider to almost 400,000 people in the state, it said in a statement, adding that the government has blocked humanitarian flights to the Lankien, Pieri, and Akobo areas, preventing them from supplying medicines and personnel and evacuating critical patients.
Its team in Pieri was forced to evacuate its facility on Thursday due to the imminent danger of armed conflict, it added, discharging patients and grabbing emergency kits as they fled the town with the local population.
"Patients will die if the government continues to block humanitarian and medical access in Jonglei," said Abdalla Hussein, MSF desk manager for South Sudan in the statement.
"Imposing restrictions on humanitarian aid and preventing people from accessing healthcare is a crude political manoeuvre... This must stop immediately."
The World Food Programme (WFP) also urged access, saying "hundreds of thousands of lives depend on it" and that military escalation "could not have come at a worse time".
A Jonglei resident, Chol Nhial, told AFP there was an influx of people in his area, fleeing violence.
"Their situation is dire... They are coming empty-handed -- no food and no shelter," he said, adding that cholera had become a "big challenge".
On Thursday, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was "deeply concerned" by the violence in Jonglei, "which has caused many deaths, injuries and the reported displacement of 180,000 civilians".
- Opposition on 'offensive' -
The government claimed this week it was "not at war" and that security operations in Jonglei were a "necessary measure aimed at halting the advance of rebel forces".
But Ferenc David Marko, an anthropologist and expert on South Sudan who is a visiting professor at ELTE university in Budapest, said the fighting had reached levels not seen since the two sides fought a devastating civil war in 2013-18 that claimed an estimated 400,000 lives.
"The opposition forces, for the first time since the signing of the peace agreement (in 2018), are on an offensive. They have captured several government positions that the government held since 2014," he told AFP.
South Sudan is the world's newest country and has been beset by civil war, poverty and massive corruption since it was formed in 2011.
The civil war ended with a power-sharing agreement in 2018 that put Kiir and Machar together in government, but it has never been fully implemented and has unravelled over the past year, with Machar jailed and put on trial for "crimes against humanity".
Rajab Mohandis, an exiled civil society activist, said it was time "to stop the pretence that the agreement is working".
"Agreements are signed but they are not implemented. Only the violations are implemented," he added.
