South Sudan on verge of worst famine

War-torn South Sudan could become the scene of the worst famine catastrophe in Africa in decades without more aid and a ceasefire to let farmers reach their fields, the UN warned Thursday. "If we miss the planting season, there will be a catastrophic decline in food security," Toby Lanzer, the UN's top aid official in the country, told reporters in Geneva. "What will strike that country, and it will hit about seven million people, will be more grave than anything that continent has seen since the mid-1980s," he warned, referring to the massive famine in Ethiopia that shocked the world's conscience. South Sudanese farmers usually plant their fields in April and May, but they have been unable to start this year amid a raging civil war, according to AFP.