Thousands of people have been fleeing the South Sudanese town of Akobo and surrounding parts of Jonglei state, where the army says it has intensified strikes on its enemies to regain control.
The latest fighting has led the UN to warn of a possible return to full-blown civil war in the world's youngest nation.
Nyawan Koang, 30, and her five children had to walk for two days to reach the dusty village of Duk.
They had fled Ayod, a remote and largely pastoralist county in Jonglei state, where armed clashes had been raging between the military and their opponents who had been fortifying their presence there since the beginning of the year.
We were [wedged] between two forces: the SPLA-IO and the government. And their bullets kill us, she told the BBC.
Government forces are trying to retake territory from those loyal to First Vice-President Riek Machar, who has been suspended from his post after being accused of plotting to overthrow President Salva Kiir. Machar has been under house arrest in Juba for a year awaiting trial for murder, treason and crimes against humanity. He denies all charges.
Aligned with Machar are the Sudan People's Liberation Army in Opposition (SPLA-IO), who have been seizing towns in Jonglei and other neighboring states.
As they advanced, threatening Jonglei's capital, Bor, they left devastated communities in their wake. Whole villages have been torched and civilians indiscriminately killed. The government has responded swiftly - and ferociously - deploying more troops to attack the positions of their rivals.
But civilians were also attacked - including Nyawan's family. She lost both her parents when an air strike hit their small thatched-roof hut.
Fire came from the sky and burned them, she said.
Nyawan and her family are among the more than 280,000 people forced from their homes by recent clashes. Thousands of them are in Duk, where aid organizations provide food, medicine, and other basic essentials.
Yet more lives are likely to be turned upside-down, or snuffed out altogether, unless a political change of course is made.
Fighting between forces loyal to President Salva Kiir and his rival-turned-deputy Riek Machar first broke out in 2013, just two years after the euphoria of independence.
A 2018 peace deal ended the civil war that had killed nearly 400,000 people, but it has never been properly implemented and the relationship between the pair has become increasingly strained amid ethnic tensions and sporadic violence.
It is not clear how many people - civilians or combatants - have been killed in the renewed conflict. One report by the UN's rights body documented 189 civilian deaths in January alone.
Civilians are bearing the brunt of a spike in indiscriminate attacks including aerial bombardments, deliberate killings, abductions and conflict-related sexual violence, said the body's head Volker Türk.
Nyawan remembers seeing several dead bodies while she was fleeing to Duk. But I don't know [which side] killed them.
As government forces and SPLA-IO fighters, who are supported by another armed group called the White Army, battle for control of territory, the lives of innocent civilians are being sacrificed.
There's no army in the world that actually fought without civilians being caught in the crossfire, Information Minister Ateny Wek Ateny told the BBC in his office in the country's capital, Juba.
He says the army is responsible in its conduct, and adds that his government is trying its best and has taken measures [to ensure] civilians are not involved in the situation. But he concludes civilians who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time might be caught in the crossfire. There's no way you can prevent that.
Yet some of the attacks on civilians appear to be deliberate.
By the government's own admission, in the last week of February more than 20 civilians - including women and the elderly - were executed at close range in Ayod by government soldiers who took control of the area.
Army spokesman Maj Gen Lul Ruai Koang told the BBC that soldiers from two platoons and their commanders had been put in detention following internal investigations and now face a court martial.
In the government fallout that preceded this latest spike of violence, President Kiir not only fired Machar but also his wife - Interior Minister Angelina Teny - along with several other senior government figures.
The reason for Machar's detention and trial are his alleged links to White Army fighters who seized control of a military base from the national army last year, say the authorities.
But Machar's supporters see the move as politically motivated and in breach of South Sudan's power-sharing agreement.
As violence escalates in Jonglei state, many innocent civilians are continuing to suffer. Humanitarian aid remains critical, with 60% of Jonglei's two million people facing hunger, while across South Sudan as a whole, 10 million out of 14 million people require food aid.
With humanitarian groups facing increasing challenges due to insecurity and a poorly developed road network, the future for many in South Sudan remains uncertain. Experts warn that the fragile peace could easily collapse once again.
