Conflict along the Nile River in South Sudan has for nearly a month blocked humanitarian access to more than 60.000 malnourished children in the northeast of the country, two agencies of theUN warned today.

The World Food Programme (WFP) and Unicef said they expect food stocks for Upper Nile state, which has some of the highest rates of malnutrition in South Sudan, to run out by the end of the month.

“Children are anyway the first to suffer in the emergencies. If we fail to get food through, we are likely to see an escalation of malnutrition in areas already on the verge of collapse,” warned Mary-Ellen McGroarty, WFP’s South Sudan representative, in the joint statement issued by the agency and Unicef.

The Nile River is a critical transport channel for South Sudan because this impoverished African country lacks an adequate road network and the terrain is particularly difficult, with many roads impassable during the rainy season.

U.N. agencies have not specified whether the fighting has caused problems for their barges carrying aid across the Nile, but South Sudanese government forces have been fighting since March against a Nour tribal militia, known as the White Army, near the river’s banks.

The security situation in South Sudan has deteriorated in recent months, with clashes between forces of President Salva Kiir and those loyal to First Vice President Rick Makar, who was arrested in March, fuelling fears of a resurgence of a civil war that only ended in 2018 after claiming the lives of some 400,000 people.

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