Urgent humanitarian assistance is needed for some 100,000 people trapped in the South Sudanese town of Yei, where the security situation deteriorated rapidly after renewed conflict broke out in Juba, the capital, in early July, the United Nations refugee agency warned.

"Until now, Yei has been largely spared from the violence and attacks that have plagued the country since December 2013," William Spindler, a spokesperson of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), told reporters in Geneva.

"This is the first time that the population in Yei – primarily farmers living on commercial and subsistence agriculture – has become a direct target of violence, and on suspicion of their belonging to opposition groups. They urgently need humanitarian assistance," he added.

Yei is situated in Central Equatoria state, close to South Sudan’s borders with Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and about 150 kilometres south-west of Juba.

More than 30,000 people have been displaced into Yei from surrounding areas, following deadly attacks on civilians and looting of private property on 11 and 13 September.

They joined several thousand others displaced from nearby Lainya County since mid-July, and up to 60,000 town residents who remain in Yei with no means to leave and who are now in as much need as those displaced by the conflict. 

Source : QNA