10,000 refugees flee to South Sudan as conflict rages

Around 10,000 refugees have entered South Sudan from Sudan in recent days fleeing fighting between the army and paramilitary forces, officials in South Sudan’s Renk County said on Monday.

About 6,500 crossed the border on Saturday and another 3,000 on Sunday, and more were arriving on Monday, county commissioner Kak Padiet told Reuters.

The army commander in Renk, Dau Aturjong, said three-quarters of the arrivals are South Sudanese while the rest are Sudanese, Eritrean, Kenyan, Ugandan and Somali.

Sudan hosts 800,000 South Sudanese refugees who have fled long-running conflicts there. South Sudan gained its independence from its northern neighbour in 2011.

“It is the local authorities and local people providing assistance to the new arrivals,” Aturjong told Reuters. “Up to now, humanitarian organisations have not intervened.”

More than 2 million people are also internally displaced within South Sudan, where civil war from 2013 to 2018 resulted in an estimated 400,000 deaths.