More than a million people in South Sudan have been affected by flooding across much of the country, the UN humanitarian agency Ocha said.
More than a quarter of them – many in the north – have been driven from their homes by rising waters.
Ocha said the displaced took refuge on higher ground, but the rains also made getting help to those who needed it increasingly difficult.
This is one of the worst flood seasons that South Sudan – a country with more than eleven million inhabitants – has experienced in recent decades.
In Pibor, in the east, 112,000 people have lost their homes, according to a government aid agency.
Those who fled to higher ground “don’t even have food, they left everything at that previous location,” Joseph Nyao, director of Relief and Rehabilitation, told the BBC from Pibor.
He added that the government is urging people in areas at risk of flooding to “immediately move to higher ground identified by local authorities for their safety.”
“The water level is still rising and the water movement continues.”
In May, the government warned the international community of the risk of exceptional flooding that was expected to hit the country in the following months.
Ocha said that since the rains began, 15 major supply routes have become impassable, hampering the delivery of essential humanitarian aid to some 500,000 people in different parts of the country.
This all comes as South Sudan continues to deal with the fallout from neighboring Sudan’s 18-month civil war.
Since April last year, more than half a million Sudanese refugees and returnees from South Sudan have been registered in South Sudan.
South Sudan, already in the grip of a worsening humanitarian situation, sees its ability to respond further overloaded, Ocha warned.
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