French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres on Tuesday accused South Sudan’s government of blocking humanitarian access \u200cto opposition-controlled areas and said all parties involved in an ongoing conflict in the impoverished country were exploiting aid for political and military ends.<\/p>\n
Clashes between the military and fighters loyal to detained First Vice President Riek Machar’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army-in-Opposition (SPLA-IO) \u200bparty have surged since last year, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee their homes \u200bin opposition-controlled areas.<\/p>\n
MSF said in a report that it had observed “a concerning trend of \u2060access blockages, recurring coercive letters and\u00a0evacuation orders\u00a0by the Government of South Sudan directed at civilians and \u200bhumanitarian organisations in contested and SPLA-IO controlled locations.”<\/p>\n
“At the same time, aid is being instrumentalised for military and political \u200bobjectives by all parties to the conflict. Attempts to force NGOs to relocate aid to and from certain areas are depriving entire communities of life-saving assistance,” MSF said.<\/p>\n
Calls to spokespeople for the army and the government were not answered. Reuters was \u200bnot immediately able to reach the spokesperson for the SPLA-IO.<\/p>\n
SURGE IN VIOLENCE<\/strong><\/p>\n The medical charity also said that attacks \u200bon its facilities, including the bombing of two hospitals in May 2025 and in February this year, had led to \u200caround 762,000 \u2060people losing access to healthcare.<\/p>\n At the time of the\u00a0February bombing, which struck a hospital in eastern Jonglei state, MSF said that South Sudanese government forces were the only armed party in the country with the capacity to perform aerial attacks.<\/p>\n The surge in violence — including reports of massacres of civilians by soldiers, opposition fighters and \u200ballied militias — prompted U.N. human \u200brights chief Volker Turk\u00a0to \u2060warn\u00a0earlier this year that the country was at “a dangerous point”.<\/p>\n MSF said that it had treated more than 1,800 people affected by violence in January and February \u200bthis year, the equivalent of nearly 30% of the total number of patients \u200bit saw last \u2060year. Patients were treated for various injuries from gunshots, blasts, sexual assaults, and other attacks, it said.<\/p>\n A 2018 peace deal in South Sudan ended a five-year civil war between forces allied with President Salva Kiir and those \u2060loyal to \u200bMachar that had left nearly 400,000 people dead.<\/p>\n Machar’s\u00a0arrest\u00a0last year raised \u200bfears that the country would once again be plunged into war. He and 20 others have been put\u00a0on trial\u00a0on charges including \u200btreason linked to militia raids in the northeast. All deny the charges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" French aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres on Tuesday accused South Sudan’s government of blocking humanitarian access \u200cto opposition-controlled areas and said all parties involved in an ongoing conflict in the impoverished country were exploiting aid for political and military ends. Clashes between the military and fighters loyal to detained First Vice President Riek Machar’s Sudan […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":3,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,2362,2854,33],"tags":[5152,116,5153],"class_list":["post-20913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-featured","category-health","category-politics","tag-medecins-sans-frontieres-msf","tag-south-sudan","tag-sudan-peoples-liberation-army-in-opposition-spla-io-party"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20913"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20915,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20913\/revisions\/20915"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}