A medical official working with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) says that the aid group is helping people who fled violence in Wau including for gunshot wounds and rapes, and that they have observed widespread “mental trauma”.

SPLA and SPLA-IO both have denied that their forces participated in clashes within Wau town, raising questions about why so many dead bodies were found in the city since this weekend and why tens of thousands of citizens have sought protection from United Nations peacekeepers.

MSF's deputy medical coordinator in Wau, Dr. David Kahindi, gave an account of the situation by phone on Monday. He said that the previously empty fields around the UN base in Wau are now “flooded with thousands of people who have fled their homes in fear for their lives.”

“We know that tens of thousands more people are scattered across the surrounding area. Some are sheltering in a school, in a church and others are totally exposed to the elements in the forest.”

Kahindi explained, “The people we are treating are much sicker than we would have thought, but it is the culmination of months of ongoing instability. We’ve seen gunshot wounds, women who have been raped. We’ve also seen people who just want to express what has happened to them.”

“They are very distressed and have physical manifestations resulting of mental trauma. Today one man came to tell me that his brother had died in the fighting. He was trying to hide, but he was found and killed. He was asking us for help and it is clear that he is very depressed,” added the doctor.

The MSF official also reported that some patients have fled from the local hospital because they don't feel safe there. “Today I treated a lady who had severe burns on her hands and abdomen that had gone septic. She was too scared to get back to the hospital,” he said.

Besides treating people within Wau, MSF have also been running mobile clinics outside of the town since several months ago. Violence on the outskirts of the city has been ongoing for some time, with ceasefire monitors earlier this year citing allegations that government troops attacked civilians in the area while also blaming opposition fighters for provoking them.

People displaced in this earlier violence may have been affected again by the more recent clashes and attacks on civilians over the weekend.

Dr. Kahindi says, “It is possible that there are hundreds if not thousands of people who have been pushed even further away by the fighting. It is those people that I am really worried about—if they are sick and can’t find treatment. We will work tirelessly to try to reach those people in the coming days.”

Photo: People seeking protection from UN peacekeepers, June 25, 2016 (UNMISS)