Juba (AFP) - An American coach on Wednesday began training South Sudanese wheelchair basketball players, saying the sport could offer hope and confidence to the disabled in the conflict-torn country.
Top wheelchair basketball coach Jess Markt is holding training sessions for ten days with the players, many of whom lost their legs during the war for independence from Sudan.
Markt urged the government of South Sudan to support the game as a means to give the disabled "confidence and give them the idea that they can accomplish more than what society thinks they can."
Despite winning independence in 2011, civil war broke out in South Sudan in 2013 and violence has continued to tear the world's youngest nation apart.