Bad news from South Sudan:
At least 185 people – mostly women and children – have been killed in ethnic violence in South Sudan, officials say.
Members of the Lou Nuer community had gone fishing south of Akobo town amid a severe food shortage when ethnic Murle fighters reportedly attacked them.
Eleven soldiers from the South Sudan army, the SPLA, who were protecting the Lou Nuer, were among those killed.
Several hundred people have died in such clashes this year – more than in Sudan’s Darfur conflict, the UN says.
How can this be stopped?
The state’s governor, Kuol Manyang, told the BBC that a few survivors had made it back to Akobo town, though many of them were wounded.
Those killed, he said, were on the fishing expedition because food supplies were running out following an attack in June on river barges carrying aid.
He appealed to the UN World Food Programme to find a way of getting food to them.
But there’s a bit of problem with that, highlighted by the BBC last week:
The UN food agency says it is facing critical funding shortages that have forced it to cut aid deliveries to millions of people facing starvation.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it could have to close parts of its airway, used to fly aid workers to humanitarian trouble-spots.
Deliveries have already been suspended to north Uganda, Ivory Coast and Niger.
The organisation has issued similar warnings in the past when facing funding shortages.
The UN Humanitarian Air Service (UNHAS), operated by WFP, has a budget for 2009 of $160m (£96m) but has received less than $90m in fees and contributions this year.
WFP spokesman Greg Barrow said UNHAS was “a vital component of humanitarian operations across the world”.
“But because of a funding shortfall there is now a grave risk that the air service … could literally be grounded in the next few weeks due to a lack of funds,” he said.
It’s less than a month since the G8 leaders promised billions of dollars to food aid – with a focus on increasing agricultural capacity rather than crisis response. That’s the right approach. But we need crisis response too, or this sort of violence is going to get worse.
