Close to 4,500 displaced people have recently sought shelter in the UN Mission in Malakal, in Upper Nile State in South Sudan, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said here Tuesday.

"This brings the total number of civilians in that site close to 26,000, and overall (more than) 115,000 country-wide are being sheltered in UN compounds," Dujarric said at a daily news briefing. "And that is the highest number of displaced that the Mission is protecting since the start of the present conflict in December 2013."

"New displacements of population are also reported by our other humanitarian partners in other parts of South Sudan, including 31, 000 in Jonglei State," he said.

South Sudan plunged into violence in December 2013, when fighting erupted between troops loyal to President Salva Kiir and defectors led by his former deputy Riek Machar.

The conflict soon turned into an all-out war, with the violence taking on an ethnic dimension that pitted the president's Dinka tribe against Machar's Nuer ethnic group.

The clashes have left thousands of South Sudanese dead and forced around 1.9 million people to flee homes. Endite

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