Latest news with #ElFasher
France 24
16 hours ago
- Health
- France 24
Refugees grapple with hunger and cholera in Sudan's displacement camps
Cholera is ripping through the refugee camps of Tawila in Darfur in western Sudan, where hundreds of thousands of people have been left with nothing but the water they can boil, to serve as both disinfectant and medicine. "We mix lemon in the water when we have it and drink it as medicine," said Mona Ibrahim, who has been living for two months in a hastily-erected camp in Tawila. "We have no other choice," she told AFP, seated on the bare ground. Adam is one of nearly half a million people who sought shelter in and around Tawila, from the nearby besieged city of El-Fasher and the Zamzam displacement camp in April, following attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), at war with Sudan's regular army since April 2023. Surging through the camps The first cholera cases in Tawila were detected in early June in the village of Tabit, about 25 kilometres south, said Sylvain Penicaud, a project co-ordinator for French charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF). "After two weeks, we started identifying cases directly in Tawila, particularly in the town's displacement camps," he told AFP. In the past month, more than 1,500 cases have been treated in Tawila alone, he said, while the UN's children agency says around 300 of the town's children have contracted the disease since April. Across North Darfur state, more than 640,000 children under the age of five are at risk, according to UNICEF. By July 30, there were 2,140 infections and at least 80 deaths across Darfur, UN figures show. Sudan: 25 million people acutely food insecure, according to the WHO 04:03 Cholera is a highly contagious bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhoea and spreads through contaminated water and food. Causing rapid dehydration, it can kill within hours if left untreated, yet it is preventable and usually easily treatable with oral rehydration solutions. More severe cases require intravenous fluids and antibiotics. The World Health Organization said last week that cholera "has swept across Sudan, with all states reporting outbreaks". It said nearly 100,000 cases had been reported across the country since July 2024. UNICEF also reported over 2,408 deaths across 17 of Sudan's 18 states since August 2024. Ibrahim Adam Mohamed Abdallah, UNICEF's executive director in Tawila, told AFP his team "advises people to wash their hands with soap, clean the blankets and tarps provided to them and how to use clean water". But in the makeshift shelters of Tawila, patched together from thin branches, scraps of plastic and bundles of straw, even those meagre precautions are out of reach. 'No soap, no toilets, no choice' Insects cluster on every barely washed bowl, buzzing over the scraps of already meagre meals. Haloum Ahmed, who has been suffering from severe diarrhoea for three days, said "there are so many flies where we live". Water is often fetched from nearby natural sources – often contaminated – or from one of the few remaining shallow, functional wells. It "is extremely worrying", said MSF's Penicaud, but "those people have no (other) choice". Sitting beside a heap of unwashed clothes on the dusty ground, Ibrahim said no one around "has any soap". "We don't have toilets – the children relieve themselves in the open," she added. "We don't have food. We don't have pots. No blankets – nothing at all," said Fatna Essa, another 50-year-old displaced woman in Tawila. The UN has repeatedly warned of food insecurity in Tawila, where aid has trickled in, but nowhere near enough to feed the hundreds of thousands who go hungry. 'Overwhelmed' Sudan's conflict, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands and created the world's largest displacement and hunger crises, according to the United Nations. In Tawila, health workers are trying to contain the cholera outbreak – but resources are stretched thin. MSF has opened a 160-bed cholera treatment centre in Tawila, with plans to expand to 200 beds. A second unit has also been set up in Daba Nyra, one of the most severely affected camps. But both are already overwhelmed, said Penicaud. Meanwhile, aid convoys remain largely paralysed by the fighting and humanitarian access has nearly ground to a halt. Armed groups – particularly the RSF – have blocked convoys from reaching those in need. Meanwhile, the rainy season, which peaks this month, may bring floodwaters that further contaminate water supplies and worsen the crisis. Any flooding could "heighten the threat of disease outbreaks", warned UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric.
Jordan Times
a day ago
- General
- Jordan Times
Sudan paramilitary attack kills over 40 in Darfur camp
KHARTOUM — Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked a famine-hit refugee camp in Darfur on Monday, killing at least 40 civilians and injuring 19 others, rescuers said. The RSF stormed Abu Shouk, opening fire inside homes and on the streets, the local Emergency Response Room said, reporting "more than 40 civilians" dead at the camp north of El Fasher, the last city in the western Darfur region still held by the Sudanese army, at war with the paramilitary group since April 2023. In recent months, North Darfur state capital El Fasher and nearby displacement camps have come under renewed attacks by the RSF, after the group withdrew from Sudan's capital Khartoum earlier this year. A major RSF offensive in April on Zamzam, a nearby displacement camp, forced tens of thousands of people to flee again -- with many of them now sheltering inside El Fasher. The RSF controls nearly all of Darfur, while the army dominates the country's north, east and centre. The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and created what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis. Last year, famine has been declared in three camps around El-Fasher, including Abu Shouk, and the United Nations had estimated it would take hold in the city itself by last May. A lack of data has prevented an official famine declaration.
Arab News
2 days ago
- Health
- Arab News
Malnutrition in El-Fasher kills 63 in a week
PORT SUDAN: Malnutrition has claimed the lives of at least 63 people, mostly women and children, in just one week in Sudan's besieged city of El-Fasher, a health official said on Sunday. The official said the figure only included those who managed to reach hospitals, adding that many families buried their dead without seeking medical help due to poor security conditions and a lack of transportation. Since May last year, El-Fasher has been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which have been at war with Sudan's regular army since April 2023. The city remains the last major Darfur urban center in army control and has recently come under renewed attack by the RSF after the group withdrew from Sudan's capital, Khartoum, earlier this year. The city remains the last major Darfur urban center in army control and has recently come under renewed attack by the Rapid Support Forces. A major RSF offensive on the nearby Zamzam displacement camp in April forced tens of thousands of people to flee again — many of them now sheltering inside El-Fasher. Community kitchens — once a lifeline — have largely shut down due to a lack of supplies. Some families are reportedly surviving on animal fodder or food waste. Nearly 40 percent of children under five in El-Fasher are now acutely malnourished, with 11 percent suffering from severe acute malnutrition, according to UN figures. The rainy season, which peaks in August, is further complicating efforts to reach the city. Roads are rapidly deteriorating, making aid deliveries difficult if not impossible. The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands, displaced millions, and created what the United Nations describes as the world's largest displacement and hunger crises. Rapid Support Forces killed 18 civilians in an attack on two villages west of Khartoum earlier this week, a monitoring group said on Saturday. The attack occurred on Thursday in North Kordofan state, which is key to the RSF's fuel smuggling route from Libya. The area has been a major battleground between the army and the paramilitaries for months, and communications lines with the rest of the world have been mostly cut off. According to the Emergency Lawyers human rights group, which has documented abuses since the start of the war two years ago, the attack on the two villages in North Kordofan 'killed 18 civilians and wounded dozens.' The wounded were transferred to the state capital of El-Obeid for treatment. Tolls are nearly impossible to independently verify in Sudan, as many medical facilities have been forced out of service and there is limited media access.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Starvation spreads from camps to besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher
Months after famine was declared in nearby displacement camps, the besieged Sudanese city of El-Fasher is now seeing starvation deaths of its own, with no food aid entering and the UN's World Food Programme warning of worsening conditions for the 300,000 people still trapped inside. After nearly 28 months of siege, the UN's children agency Unicef and the World Food Programme (WFP) say famine could soon take hold in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur. 'The situation in El Fasher is completely catastrophic; the city's population is on the verge of starvation,' said Leni Kinzli, WFP's spokesperson in Sudan, speaking to RFI this week 'It is besieged, cut off from the rest of the country, and humanitarian access is extremely difficult.' WFP says it has not been able to deliver food to the city for over a year. In the meantime, it has carried out cash transfers, but the blockade has made those nearly useless. 'Since the city is under blockade, the prices of basic necessities have skyrocketed, and people cannot even buy enough to make one meal a day,' Kinzli said. Some residents are reportedly now eating animal feed and rubbish to survive. 'And this is despite the fact that we are ready to intervene with food trucks if we are allowed to pass,' Kinzli added. WFP is again calling for aid convoys to be allowed through. Two years of devastation: Sudan's war claims thousands and displaces millions 'Skin and bones' The Sudanese army, at war with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023, recaptured Khartoum state in May, but widespread hunger continues to grip the heart of Africa's third-largest country. Many children in Sudan are now 'skin and bones', UN officials said this week, and thousands of families in El-Fasher, more than 1,000 kilometres west of Khartoum, are at risk of starving. 'Everyone in El-Fasher is facing a daily struggle to survive,' said Eric Perdison, WFP's regional director for eastern and southern Africa, on Tuesday. RSF forces have surrounded the city since May. It is the last major urban area in Darfur still under army control. 'People's coping mechanisms have been completely exhausted by over two years of war,' Perdison said in a statement. 'Without immediate and sustained access, lives will be lost.' WFP says food prices in El-Fasher are now 460 percent higher than in the rest of the country. Soup kitchens have shut down, and aid remains blocked. Unicef's Sheldon Yett, who recently visited Sudan, warned of growing malnutrition. 'Malnutrition is rife, and many of the children are reduced to just skin and bones,' he said. Around 25 million people across Sudan face severe food insecurity, according to the UN. UN urges action on Sudan's 'forgotten war' as humanitarian crisis takes hold Acute hunger, limited access Famine was first declared in the surrounding displacement camps last year, especially in Zamzam. The UN said the crisis would likely spread to the city itself by May. Only a lack of reliable data has prevented a formal famine declaration for the wider region. Aid agencies say insecurity is making it nearly impossible to act. In June, five humanitarian workers were killed when their UN convoy to El-Fasher was attacked. 'We have not had access to the horrible situation unfolding in El-Fasher, despite trying for months and months and months,' said Yett. 'We have not been able to get supplies there.' Nearly 40 percent of children under five in the area are acutely malnourished, UN data shows. Residents often shelter in makeshift bunkers to avoid shelling as the RSF continues its push to take full control of Darfur. In April, an RSF attack on Zamzam camp killed hundreds and forced hundreds of thousands to flee to el-Fasher and the nearby town of Tawila. A deadly cholera outbreak is now spreading there. 'Every day the conflict continues in Sudan, innocent lives are lost, communities are torn apart, and trauma continues to haunt generations,' said Radhouane Nouicer, the UN's expert on human rights in Sudan. 'The ongoing war has devastated civilian lives and turned daily survival into a constant struggle.' Children in crisis Relative calm has returned to Khartoum, but children there still have only "limited, but growing access to safe water, food, healthcare and learning", according to Unicef's Yett. In the two hardest-hit areas of Khartoum state, Jebel Awliya and Khartoum proper, "children and families in the neighbourhood are sheltered often in small, damaged or unfinished buildings", he added. "We are on the verge of irreversible damage to an entire generation of children." The war, now in its third year, has killed tens of thousands across Sudan, displaced millions and left the country's healthcare system in ruins. The UN describes the conflict as the world's largest displacement and hunger crisis. (with newswires)
News24
4 days ago
- General
- News24
A Sudanese city is starving: What can be done to help?
Warnings have been coming for months. Last December, the global hunger monitor Integrated Food Security Phase Classification reported famine in two camps near the northwestern Sudanese city of El Fasher, home to hundreds of thousands of displaced people. Even then, they warned Sudan's ongoing civil war could see famine spread into the city by May. The warning was prescient. El Fasher, the capital of the state of North Darfur, has now been under siege for over a year now. This week, the United Nations and a number of its agencies warned that approximately 300 000 people trapped inside the city face starvation. 'WFP [the World Food Program] has not been able to deliver food assistance to El Fasher by road for over a year as all roads leading there are blocked,' the UN aid programme said in a statement on Tuesday. 'The city is cut off from humanitarian access leaving the remaining population with little choice but to fend for survival with whatever limited supplies are left.' 'In El Fasher, there was only bombing and hunger.' 8-year-old Sondos fled. But 300,000 people are still trapped, cut off from food, water, and medicine. WFP needs urgent safe passage into El Fasher. Lives hang in the balance. 🔴Press release: — WFP Sudan (@WFP_Sudan) August 5, 2025 Many residents are resorting to eating hay or animal fodder. Food that is available in the city costs significantly more than elsewhere in Sudan, making it unaffordable for most people. 'What we really need now is for a humanitarian pause to be agreed upon so that we can safely transport urgent food and nutrition supplies into the city,' Leni Kinzli, a WFP spokesperson based in Sudan, told DW. Why is this happening? Sudan's civil war began in early 2023 when two rival military groups - the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) - started fighting for control. The SAF, with about 200 000 personnel and led by the country's de facto leader Abdel-Fattah Burhan, operates like a regular army. Burhan's government, based in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, is recognised as Sudan's government by the UN. AFP The RSF is estimated to have 70 000 to 100 000 fighters and headed by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti. It functions more like a guerrilla force and includes the infamous Janjaweed militias, notorious for their brutality in Darfur in the early 2000s. Both sides have been accused of war crimes. El Fasher remains the only urban centre in the Darfur region not controlled by the RSF. If the RSF wins here, they would control almost all of western Sudan. The SAF-aligned militias inside El Fasher, known as the Joint Forces, prevent a complete RSF victory. This is why the RSF has laid siege to the city since April 2024, digging trenches and regularly launching attacks on it. AFP The situation worsened this past April when the RSF attacked two camps near El Fasher sheltering over 500 000 displaced people. Many fled into the city or nearby towns. Siege on El Fasher has tightened As the Joint Forces inside El Fasher lose ground, the RSF has tightened the siege in recent moments, said Shayna Lewis, senior adviser on Sudan for the US-based group PAEMA (Preventing and Ending Mass Atrocities). 'The Rapid Support Forces have besieged the city for over a year at this point,' she told DW in a televised interview. 'But it's particularly in the past few months that they've tightened that blockade. Nothing is coming in and out. We used to have donkey carts that carried food into the city but now barely anything is able to even be smuggled in.' AFP Locals have said the RSF aims to starve out SAF-allied forces. There are also reports that some of the forces inside the city are preventing civilians from leaving, using them as a protective buffer. 'They attacked us; it was exhausting,' Enaam Mohammed, a Sudanese woman who fled El Fasher for the nearby town of Tawila, told journalists this week. Tawila, around 40km away, has seen a massive influx of around 400 000 displaced people since April. Diseases like cholera and measles are now spreading there. '[They asked us] 'Where are the weapons? Where are the men?'' Mohammed continued, describing her experience with the RSF. If they find someone with a mobile phone, they take it. If you have money, they take it. If you have a good, strong donkey, they take it. Enaam Mohammed Mohammed said she also saw the RSF killing people and raping women. What can be done? Currently, the conflict is at what analysts have described as a 'strategic stalemate'. Alongside other smaller groups, the RSF controls much of western Sudan, while the SAF controls the east. Earlier in July, the RSF set up their own civilian government, effectively splitting Sudan in two. There is no credible peace process and heavy fighting is also ongoing in other parts of Sudan. 'Both parties view the conflict through a zero-sum lens,' analysts at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) wrote earlier this year. 'The victory of one side is entirely dependent on the defeat of the other.' Neither side wants to negotiate, observers say. AFP Exacerbating that situation is foreign backing for the different fighting groups. In July, the US postponed a meeting about Sudan that would have brought together Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. The Saudis and Egyptians are thought to support the SAF and the UAE, the RSF - all deny providing military aid to Sudanese groups. The meeting is now rumoured to be rescheduled for September. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called SAF leader Burhan to ask for a weeklong ceasefire that would allow aid into El Fasher. Burhan agreed, but the RSF has yet to consent. The impact of the war also goes well beyond the besieged city of El Fasher, the WFP's Kinzli pointed out. The UN regularly calls what is happening in Sudan the world's largest humanitarian crisis. Aid agencies estimate that around 12 million people of Sudan's 46-million-strong population have been displaced by the conflict and that around 150 000 people have died as a result of it. There are famine conditions and infectious diseases in other parts of the country too. 'What we need from the international community is two things,' Kinzli said. 'One, of course, is funding - because the scale of needs in Sudan is just so high. We're looking at 25 million people who face acute hunger and that's a moderate estimate. The resources we have available are just not able to meet that level of need.' The second thing aid agencies like the WFP would like to see is 'increased attention and engagement' with Sudan from the international community, she argued. 'Primarily to help bring an end to this conflict by bringing all parties to the table, but also to join us in our calls for unfettered humanitarian access.' 'What needs to happen in Sudan is that the flow of aid needs to be larger than the flow of weapons,' Kinzli concluded.
