By Alex Whiting

LONDON, May 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Fighting in and around South Sudan's Leer town has disrupted the hunger-hit region's crucial planting season, and residents returning to the town urgently need food, water and medical help, aid workers said on Tuesday.

Nearly 100,000 people fled the town and surrounding areas in Unity State about two weeks ago, after hearing reports that warring forces were advancing on the area, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said.

Many hid in malaria-infested swamps several hours' walk from the town. Those who have begun trickling home told the ICRC they have little or no food and need health care. The aid agency said the needs are likely to grow fast.

"The needs are enormous, and the (aid) response has to be scaled up in the days and weeks ahead," ICRC spokesman Pawel Krzysiek said in a telephone interview from Juba.

The world's newest state, which declared independence from Sudan in 2011, was plunged into conflict nearly 18 months ago between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and rebels allied with his former deputy, Riek Machar.

The conflict in the northeastern African nation deepened ethnic faultlines between Kiir's Dinka people and Machar's largely ethnic Nuer followers.

The area's short planting season, which lasts just a few weeks, has been disrupted by the conflict.

Reports of continuing fighting mean that most of those who have returned are afraid to stay in the town at night, Krzysiek said.

"We are really risking missing the planting season. People simply don't have time for that yet, that's the biggest concern," Krzysiek said.

ICRC staff, who fled Leer with the residents, had to suspend food delivery to 120,000 people. The aid agency's compound was looted and four vehicles and furniture were stolen.

Staff were able to return on Saturday and began flying in food and other supplies on Tuesday.

Hunger in Leer county, as in many of the worst-affected areas of South Sudan, is already at crisis levels. Without food aid, it would likely have reached emergency levels - one step from famine - according to the Famine Early Warning Systems Network.

John Jal Riak, 23, who slept in the "tall grass" eight hours' walk from Leer, survived on water lilies and coconuts. "The community is really suffering," he told the ICRC.

(Reporting by Alex Whiting, Editing by Tim Pearce)

 

* Militants attacked two police patrols in rural areas

* Al Shabaab say killed 25 officers, police deny

* Kenyan president under pressure, tourism devastated (Adds details, police comment on no deaths)

By Humphrey Malalo and George Obulutsa

NAIROBI, May 26 (Reuters) - Islamist militants from Somalia attacked two police patrols in neighbouring Kenya on Tuesday, triggering a gun battle in a rural area hit by a string of cross-border raids, both sides said.

Somalia's al Shabaab fighters said they had killed 25 Kenyan officers, an account contradicted by the police force that said one of its men had died and four had been wounded.

The al Qaeda-linked militants said they ambushed the police about 70 km (40 miles) north of Garissa, a town where the Islamists raided a university and killed 148 people in April.

Al Shabaab militants, fighting to overthrow a Western-backed government in Somalia, have launched several attacks inside Kenya, trying to force it to pull troops from a African peacekeeping force in their homeland.

The assaults have piled political pressure on the Nairobi government, which has promised to carry on with its Somali mission, and devastated Kenya's tourism industry, one of its main sources of foreign income.

Police said one officer had died from his wounds after the attacks in the Fafi and Yumbis areas, one was critically wounded and three others suffered minor injuries.

"A contingent of officers responded for reinforcement and on arrival at the scene, engaged the attackers in a heavy fire-fight," Inspector General Joseph Boinnet said in a statement.

Kenyan media had earlier reported that as many as 20 officers could have been killed, and al Shabaab said 25 died.

"We took all their weapons. There were some Kenyan forces that escaped in the course of the ambush fighting," al Shabaab's military operations spokesman, Sheikh Abdiasis Abu Musab, said.

Somali and African troops have pushed al Shabaab out of Somalia's main cities in recent years. But Tuesday's attacks underlined militants' continuing ability to strike Kenya's frontier regions.

Last week, al Shabaab attacked Yumbis and hoisted its flag on a mosque where fighters held prayers before heading to another nearby village.

Al Shabaab has killed more then 400 people on Kenyan soil since Kenya's President Uhuru Kenyatta came to power in April 2013.

Kenyan anti-terrorism forces arrested a "wanted terror suspect" in possession of a Russian-made hand grenade, bomb detonator and plastic explosives in the port city of Mombasa on Tuesday, county police commander Robert Kitur said. (Additional reporting by Joseph Akwiri in Mombasa and Feisal Omar in Mogadishu; Writing by Drazen Jorgic; Editing by Andrew Heavens)