Besieged Sudan city residents face starvation, UN warns

The UN’s food agency has warned that families trapped within the besieged Sudanese city of el-Fasher face starvation. The World Food Programme (WFP) said it had not been able to deliver food to the city in the western Darfur region by road for more than a year.

El-Fasher has been surrounded by paramilitary fighters from the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for nearly 16 months – determined to seize it from Sudan’s army. The WFP warning comes as local activists have already begun reporting deaths by starvation in the city, which is still home to about 300,000 people.

Sudan was plunged into a civil war in April 2023 after a vicious power struggle erupted between the army and its former ally, the RSF – creating one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

The UN’s children’s agency (Unicef) has also issued a statement saying malnutrition is rife across the country, with many children “reduced to skin and bones”.

The WFP warning echoes a recent appeal for urgent support from the North Darfur Governor Al-Hafiz Bakhit, who said the living situation in el-Fasher had become unbearable.

Bakhit is aligned with Sudan’s military-led government, which is trying to retain control of the city, its last foothold in Darfur. The RSF’s battle to seize el-Fasher from the Sudanese army has intensified in recent months, after the paramilitaries were driven out of the capital, Khartoum.

UN statistics in early July showed that 38% of children under the age of five in camps for internally displaced people within and near el-Fasher suffered from acute malnutrition.

Credit: bbc.com

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