Food barge reaches Juba

Juba (Reuter) - A United Nations barge carrying food travelled up the Nile through Sudan's civil-war zone and reached Juba to blaze a trail for plans to stop almost a million people starving to death.

Its cargo was a modest 350 tons of food. But the diplomatic and logistical achievement raised the hopes of relief workers struggling to contain what many fear may be a catastrophe on the scale of Somalia. Two of the factions attacked the barge and food was looted eight times. Bullets and the low level of the river doubled what should have been a one-month trip.