'Fire came from the sky and burned them' - life on the brink of civil war in South Sudan

Thousands of people have been fleeing the South Sudanese town of Akobo and surrounding parts of Jonglei state, where the army says it has intensified strikes on its enemies to regain control.

The latest fighting has led the UN to warn of a possible return to full-blown civil war in the world's youngest nation.

Nyawan Koang, 30, and her five children had to walk for two days to reach the dusty village of Duk. They had fled Ayod, a remote and largely pastoralist county in Jonglei state, where armed clashes had been raging between the military and their opponents who had been fortifying their presence there since the beginning of the year.

We were [wedged] between two forces: the SPLA-IO and the government. And their bullets kill us, she told the BBC.

Aligned with Machar are the Sudan People's Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), who have been seizing towns in Jonglei and other neighbouring states. As they advanced, threatening Jonglei's capital, Bor, they left devastated communities in their wake. Whole villages have been torched and civilians indiscriminately killed. The government has responded swiftly - and ferociously - deploying more troops to attack the positions of their rivals.

But civilians were also attacked - including Nyawan's family. She lost both her parents when an air strike hit their small thatched-roof hut. Fire came from the sky and burned them, she said.

Nyawan and her family are among the more than 280,000 people forced from their homes by recent clashes. Thousands of them are in Duk, where aid organisations provide food, medicine and other basic essentials.

Fighting between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-deputy Riek Machar first broke out in 2013, just two years after the euphoria of independence. A 2018 peace deal ended the civil war that had killed nearly 400,000 people, but it has never been properly implemented, and the relationship between the pair has become increasingly strained amid ethnic tensions and sporadic violence.

The resurgence of violence in Jonglei has exacerbated already dire humanitarian needs in the state. According to the World Food Programme (WFP), 60% of Jonglei's two million people are facing hunger. Across South Sudan as a whole, 10 million out of 14 million people need food aid.

South Sudan is one of the world's most complex environments to provide humanitarian assistance, WFP's acting country director Adham Affandy told the BBC.

He indicated that more lives are likely to be turned upside-down or snuffed out altogether unless a political change of course is made.