South Sudan is heading for famine, UN agencies have warned, as conflict seals off communities and the aid system that might have reached them runs short of money.
The warning, issued jointly by the three UN agencies – the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF – places 56 per cent of the country's 12 million population at high levels of hunger. The figure breaks down into 5.3 million in a hunger crisis, 2.5 million facing hunger emergency and 73,300 in hunger catastrophe - the most severe classification, with the latter increasing 160 per cent in six months.
