By Guillaume Lavallee
Khartoum - South Sudan, a vast under-developed region in the grip of renewed tribal violence, is facing a massive food shortage, a UN official said on Wednesday, appealing for donor countries to boost aid.
"The southern Sudan is faced with a massive food deficit caused by a combination of late rains, high levels of insecurity and displacement, disruptions of trade and high food prices," said Lise Grande, who coordinates UN humanitarian efforts in the region.
"The rains necessary for the first harvest have failed - which will extend the hunger gap from June all the way through October, when it normally ends in August," she added.
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A spike in tribal conflict has killed about 2 000 people this year, the United Nations says, and has also displaced thousands.
Grande said that neither the autonomous regional government of south Sudan, which faces a budget shortfall, nor the UN could provide the needed relief, especially to remote areas.
"In terms of capacity, the point is that there isn't enough," she said.
The situation was especially worrisome given the 2005 power-sharing deal that ended the two-decade civil war between the mainly Christian and animist south and the Muslim north, Grande said.
"I know that there is a lot of attention to Darfur and this is deserved, but the south deserves much more than it is receiving, particularly when the CPA (Comprehensive Peace Agreement) itself is entering its critical stage," she said.
South Sudan is due to vote in an independence referendum in 2011, a year after countrywide elections take place.
But brutal clashes between ethnic groups in the region have jeopardised the peace deal. At least 30 people were killed and more than 15 women and children abducted in the latest outbreak of ethnic clashes in south Sudan this week.
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