NAIROBI: Some 893,000 people have been affected by flooding in South Sudan and more than 241,000 displaced, the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA said Thursday in a grim update on the disaster.

Aid agencies have warned that the world’s youngest country, highly vulnerable to climate change, is facing its worst flooding in decades.

“Flooding continues to affect and displace people across the country,” the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a statement.

“Heavy rainfall and floods have rendered 15 main supply routes impassable, restricting physical access.”

OCHA said about 893,000 people were flood-affected in 42 of South Sudan’s 78 counties as well as the Abyei Administrative Area, a disputed zone claimed by both Juba and Khartoum.

It said Unity and Warrap states in the north of the country accounted for more than 40 percent of the affected population.

More than 241,000 people were displaced in 16 counties and the Abyei area “seeking shelter on higher ground,” OCHA added.

Since gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, the world’s youngest nation has remained plagued by chronic instability, violence and economic stagnation as well as climate disasters such as drought and floods.

The World Bank said in an October 1 update that the latest floods were “worsening an already critical humanitarian situation marked by severe food insecurity, economic decline, continued conflict, disease outbreaks, and the repercussions of the Sudan conflict.”

It said an estimated nine million people, including refugees, will experience “critical needs” in 2024.

The conflict in Sudan has seen more than 797,000 refugees pour into South Sudan as of September, the World Bank said, almost 80 percent of them South Sudanese returnees.

The country also faces another period of political paralysis after the presidency announced yet another extension to a transitional period agreed in a 2018 peace deal, delaying elections due to take place in December by another two years.

Key provisions of the transitional agreement remain unfulfilled — including the creation of a constitution and the unification of the rival forces of President Salva Kiir and his foe Reik Machar.

The delays have left South Sudan’s partners and the United Nations increasingly exasperated.

UN mission chief Nicholas Haysom said on Wednesday there was deep frustration and fatigue among the South Sudanese people.

The international community needed “tangible evidence that this country’s leaders are genuinely committed to a democratic future.”

South Sudan boasts plentiful oil resources, but the vital source of revenue was decimated in February when an export pipeline was damaged in war-torn Sudan.

BERLIN: German Chancellor Olaf Scholz rejected claims Thursday that Berlin had imposed a de facto stop on arms exports to Israel and said more defense goods would be sent soon.
The pledge put him at odds with France, where President Emmanuel Macron last week suggested an embargo on weapons for use in Gaza, sparking a sharp rebuke from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Scholz told the German parliament that “we have not decided to stop delivering weapons. We have delivered weapons and we will deliver weapons.”
The government had taken steps “that ensure that there will be further deliveries soon,” Scholz added, without specifying what equipment would be sent.
Conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz had charged, during a parliamentary session on Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, that the German government had for months failed to approve any new arms deliveries to Israel.
Germany has long sought to atone for the Holocaust by pledging steadfast support for Israel but the relationship has come under strain since the October 7 attack sparked the devastating Gaza war.
Berlin has repeatedly joined other Western governments in calling for ceasefires in Gaza and in Lebanon, where Israel is fighting Hamas’ ally Hezbollah.
Merz — the CDU party’s candidate who hopes to topple Scholz in elections next September — alleged there were “cracks in Germany’s solidarity” with Israel.
For months “the government has been refusing to grant export permits for the delivery of ammunition and even for the delivery of spare parts for tanks to Israel,” he charged.
The parliamentary group leader of Scholz’s SPD party, Rolf Muetzenich, insisted Berlin was supporting Israel with weapons as well as humanitarian and financial aid.
He added that the use of defense exports must “comply with international humanitarian law.”
German far-left opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht sharply criticized German weapons deliveries to Israel, saying they are “aiding and abetting war crimes.”
“Israel has the right to protect itself and its citizens,” she told the Rheinische Post daily. “But Israel does not have the law on its side when it razes Gaza to the ground and buries its inhabitants under rubble and ash with unbridled ruthlessness.”
She added that “this brutality is being repeated in Lebanon. Israel’s government, which is partly made up of right-wing radicals, is threatening to plunge an entire region into the abyss. There must be no weapons from Germany for this.”