People are starting to die from famine in southern Sudan and a catastrophe is feared unless enough relief supplies reach the stricken areas. International aid agencies say countless thousands of people have nothing to eat but leaves, nuts and wild berries.
"The situation is very severe, with a third of the population malnourished," says Mr Norman Sheehan of GOAL. "It's the worst we've encountered as an agency for a number of years."
A massive aid effort is now under way. The UN World Food Programme (WFP) and non-governmental organisations like GOAL are airlifting large consignments of food to remote Bahr el Gazal province. "People are walking long distances to reach the sites where food is delivered," says Mr Sheehan, whose organisation recently brought in high-energy foodstuffs and medicines to northern Bahr el Gazal. "I met one woman who arrived with a very sick child - her other children had died along the way." The relief operation is being hampered by the inaccessibility of the famine area and by a shortage of aircraft. WFP says the government in Khartoum has given flight approval for just one Hercules transporter. The Hercules is regarded as the key aircraft, as it can lift 16 tonnes of provisions at a time. WFP fears that only a third of needy people will have been reached by the end of this month.
"We're getting more and more reports about afflicted areas," says Ms Brenda Barton of WPF in Nairobi, Kenya. "There are large numbers of malnourished kids, with more emerging from the bush every day."
An estimated 350,000 people are believed to be at risk from starvation in the south, which has been ravaged by 15 years of civil war with government forces from the north. The Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA), which controls most of the south excluding the towns, is fighting for increased autonomy from the Arab and Muslim north. The Christian and animist south is also resisting the imposition of Shari'a or Islamic law by the Islamic-backed military junta in Khartoum. Since the conflict restarted in 1983, more than a million people are believed to have died from fighting, famine and drought. "The aid effort is a bit like a sticking plaster," says Mr Sheehan, who visited the community of Turalei in Bahr el Gazal. "It's the furthest north anyone's been in southern Sudan for three years. The area is completely underdeveloped. The people have nothing. Without massive distributions of food and seeds, things will only get worse."
Turalei is in the middle of a vast savannah dotted with acacia and palm trees. Despite its Irish-sounding name, the climate is anything but Irish: temperatures on the airstrip where GOAL landed were touching 50C. This latest disaster has been caused both by natural and manmade factors. Bahr el Gazal was badly hit by drought during last year's crucial planting season.
The northern part of the province has also been terrorised by a warlord who defected to the government side, then rejoined the southern rebels early this year. During his government-sponsored reign of terror, warlord Kerubino Bol caused thousands of people to flee their homes, cattle to be stolen and crops to be destroyed.
Since his reunion with the SPLA rebels, people have been able to return to their communities. But food stocks are non-existent and, though the seasonal rains have started in the last week, the peasants have no seeds to plant.
"If people don't plant and have a harvest in August we'll have a very dire situation right into next year," Ms Barton says.