UGANDA is “at breaking point” as almost 3,000 South Sudanese refugees flee over the border every day, leaders said yesterday.

Already more than 800,000 people have crossed into the landlocked east African nation since civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013.

The total has jumped by 570,000 since July after fighting broke out in capital city Juba and it is thought that more than a million displaced South Sudanese will be living in Ugandan refugee camps by the summer.

The country is already home to one of the largest refugee camps in the world, Bidi Bidi, which was established in August and provides shelter for 270,000 people.

Yesterday Ugandan Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said the situation is becoming “critical” and urged the international community to help.

The call was backed by Filippo Grandi, the UN high commissioner for refugees, as food supplies dwindle.

The UN says it needs more than a quarter of a billion US dollars to support its work in there this year alone.

“Chronic and severe underfunding” is said to have “dangerously compromised” critical life-saving tasks, while reception and transit facilities are “rapidly becoming overwhelmed” and the onset of heavy rains is exacerbating a shortage of clean water.

However, the country’s leaders have pledged to continue their open borders policy.

Uganda’s approach to asylum seekers is amongst the most progressive in Africa. Those who gain official refugee status are given small areas of land in settlements within local communities to support themselves and improve integration.

Plots in the mid and south west of the country are provided by the government, while in the north – where most South Sudanese are living – the host community has given part of its land.

However, last month officials warned new arrivals would have to be “more creative” with the basic support they receive as the level of need continues to increase.

Meanwhile, residents at Bidi Bidi told reporters a six-week wait for food distribution had left some to live on leaves or coconuts.

Still, government minister Musa Ecweru said closing the border would be “inhumane” and yesterday Rugunda said: “Uganda has continued to maintain open borders but this unprecedented mass influx is placing enormous strain on our public services and local infrastructure.

“We continue to welcome our neighbours in their time of need but we urgently need the international community to assist as the situation is becoming increasingly critical.”

While independence from Sudan in 2011 ended Africa’s longest civil war, it did not bring lasting peace to the fledgling nation.

Its first President Salva Kiir Mayardit, head of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and an ethnic Dinka, sacked every member of his cabinet two years later, accusing Vice-President Riek Machar, part of the Nuer people, of trying to bring him down in a failed coup.

A peace deal was signed in 2015 under threat of UN sanctions and Machar was made vice-president of a new unity government the following year.

However, he was dismissed just months later and fighting was renewed.

Tens of thousands have died and untold numbers of children are being pressed into combat as fears grow that the situation may develop into something similar to the genocide that devastated Rwanda in the 1990s.

Famine has been declared as fields go unworked and high-ranking officials have been accused of serious corruption.

Though South Sudan is amongst the poorest countries in the world per capita, it is rich in resources including oil, gold and livestock, all of which are said be exploited by the powerful elite on both sides of the conflict.

With the problems showing no signs of abating, Grandi reached out to the international community yesterday, saying: “We are at breaking point. Uganda cannot handle Africa’s largest refugee crisis alone. ”