Samaritan’s Purse has evacuated its staff from a refugee camp in northern South Sudan due to escalating violence in the region.
The decision by the Christian humanitarian agency comes a month after a bombing in the area.
South Sudan has been beset by outbreaks of ethnic violence since it gained independent in July, a situation further complicated by the presence of many armed groups and militias across the country.
Samaritan’s Purse staff are hoping to return to the location but only after violence subsides.
They are eyeing other locations for the refugees flowing in from the north and cooperating with the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in supporting some 20,000 refugees from their temporary shelter in capital Juba.
Since early August, Samaritan’s Purse mission staff have been feeding and assisting refugees fleeing violence in the Nuban Mountains at a camp in the Yida region, about 12 miles from the Sudan border.
The mission has distributed hundreds of tons of food staples, with material support from the United Nations World Food Programme, and provided temporary shelter, medical care and other assistance to the growing number of refugees fleeing the ethnic conflict-resulting violence.
South Sudan has been torn by conflict for years. The small, land-locked country gained independence from North Sudan on July 9, becoming the 195th country in the world and the 55th country in Africa.
During over 20 years of conflict, violence, famine, and disease killed more than 2 million people, forced an estimated 600,000 people to seek refuge in neighbouring countries, and displaced approximately four million others within Sudan, creating the world’s largest population of internally displaced people, according to the US State Department.
The Yida camp was bombed on November 10 and the organization suspected the Sudanese government of having a hand in the attack. The bombing sent an early but clear signal that the location is no longer safe.