250,000 kids face starvation and malnutrition in South Sudan: UN
Juba
About 250,000 children face starvation in war-torn South Sudan, owing to the civil war and political unrest in the region, the expelled UN aid chief warned Tuesday.
"In half of the country, one in three children are acutely malnourished and 250,000 children face starvation," said Toby Lanzer in a report urging donors to contribute to a $1.63 billion aid appeal, saying South Sudan ranked "lower in terms of human development than just about every other place on earth."
Two-thirds of the country's 12 million people need aid, with 4.5 million people facing severe food insecurity, according to the UN.
"Political intransigence left peace ever more distant; war raged on and is leading to economic collapse," he added.
Civil war began in December 2013 when President Salva Kiir accused his former deputy Riek Machar of planning a coup, setting off a cycle of retaliatory killings across the country that has split the poverty-stricken, landlocked country along ethnic lines.
It has been characterised by ethnic massacres, rape and the use of child soldiers.
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