Spokesman for the World Food Programme (WFP), George Fominyan, said that thousands of South Sudanese families caught up in famine has resorted to weeds and water lilies to survive.

According to Ceoafrica, George said that “what we’ve seen is a lot of people coming from the islands.

“They have been living on water lilies, they have been living on roots, from weeds in the Nile, at most they eat once in a day”.

County commissioner, Majiel Nhial, also said when villagers received food aid in 2016, they were attacked, adding that “men in uniform looted and burn homes”.

“We lost all our properties, cows and our houses were looted. We were attacked, women were molested and girls abducted”.

Last week, the United Nations declared that parts of South Sudan were experiencing famine, stating that some 5.5 million people, nearly half the population, would not have reliable source of food by July, noting that the disaster was largely man-made.

Oil-rich South Sudan, the world’s youngest nation, plunged into civil war in 2013 after President Salva Kiir fired his Deputy, Reik Machar; since then, fighting has split the country along ethnic lines, inflation topped 800 per cent in 2016, while war and drought paralysed agriculture.