JUBA, 14 April 2022, (TON): Detoh Rie has spent the last five days hiding in a swamp with his children, one among thousands of South Sudanese forced to flee their homes as renewed violence threatens to return the fragile nation to war.

When clashes erupted on Friday between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival, Vice President Riek Machar, in the country’s oil-rich Unity state, Rie wasted no time in grabbing his children and running for their lives.

The 51-year-old told by telephone from Leer county “soldiers attacked our villages and burnt many of our houses. They took our cows and goats and they killed people.”

He says “he doesn’t know if the rest of his family made it out alive as the attackers reduced his village Waay to smouldering ruins. South Sudan has been here before.”

Barely two years into its hard-won independence, the country found itself in the grip of a civil war between Kiir and Machar that left nearly 400,000 people dead before the two men signed a peace deal in 2018.

But the peace process has been hamstrung by political bickering and when fighting spiralled in recent weeks, civilians have once again been forced to pay the heaviest price.