WFP warns of ‘massive’ humanitarian aid crisis in Sudan as war rages | War in Sudan News

Sudan faces a “massive” humanitarian aid crisis, with millions of hungry people denied access to vital food supplies as fighting rages in the war-torn country, the World Food Program (WFP) has warned.

WFP deputy executive director Carl Skau told Al Jazeera on Sunday that his organization was helping 5 million people across the country, including 2 million in hard-to-reach areas, but that it was not enough.

“The needs are enormous. We are talking about 20 million people suffering from acute food insecurity, and about 6 million people suffering from famine,” he said.

“This is a massive crisis and what we are able to do, which is important, is not enough.”

He said the organization had “tried every means possible” to deliver aid to populations in need, including through airdrops, digital money transfers and stationing convoys outside besieged areas.

But this had not been possible in areas plagued by violence, such as El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, which was besieged for 18 months before falling to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in October, or in the town of Babnusa, in West Kordofan, which the RSF claimed to have taken control of last week.

The government-aligned Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) has denied Babnusa’s fall.

We must focus on the Kordofan region

Skau said global attention should be focused on the Kordofan region, where fighting has been intensifying between the SAF and RSF for weeks.

The warning follows similar comments from UN human rights chief Volker Turk, who said on Thursday that the Kordofan region could face a wave of mass atrocities similar to the widespread massacres documented in El-Fasher, which fell to the RSF last month.

“The fighting there is intensifying and these are also besieged areas,” Skau said.

“Global attention must now be focused on Sudan, and diplomatic efforts must be intensified to avoid the same disaster we saw in El-Fasher. »

Before the fall of Al-Fasher in November, the UN had issued urgent warnings about possible atrocities, but these alerts went largely unheeded. After the city was captured, massacres took place, with dead bodies visible in satellite images, prompting UN chief Antonio Guterres to describe it as a “crime scene”.

Famine conditions have already been confirmed in some areas of the Darfur and Kordofan regions.

“Massacre” in South Kordofan

On Saturday, an official in the town of Kalogi in South Kordofan told Al Jazeera that at least 116 people were killed in an RSF attack on a nursery school and other sites on Thursday, including 46 children attending the nursery school.

Sudan’s Foreign Ministry called the attack in a statement a “full-blown massacre,” saying RSF forces directly targeted the kindergarten with missiles from a drone, before bombing it again as residents tried to rescue the injured, then chasing the wounded and paramedics inside a hospital.

The executive director of Kalogi locality said the high death toll in the attack was due to the severity of the injuries sustained, while some families avoided taking their injured loved ones to hospital for treatment due to the attacks on the facility.

Displaced women raped

Furthermore, the Sudanese Doctors Network said it had documented 19 cases of rape committed by RSF forces against women from the al-Afad camp in al-Dabbah who had fled the fighting in El-Fasher.

The group said two of the survivors, located in Sudan’s northern state, were pregnant and receiving “special care under the supervision of local medical teams.”

He said he “strongly condemns the gang rapes” carried out by RSF forces, which constitute a violation of international law, and warned that “the silence of the international community in the face of these heinous practices encourages their repetition.”

Separately, a Sudanese army source told Al Jazeera that air defenses had intercepted RSF drones in al-Damazin, in southern Sudan’s Blue Nile state, while a government source said electricity had been cut in the town due to the bombing of a power plant.

Separately, RSF on Friday accused the Sudanese army of bombing the Adre border post with Chad, a crossing that was vital for the delivery of humanitarian aid during the war, in what it called a deliberate attempt to hamper relief efforts.

The United Nations says violence in Sudan has displaced 9 million people and left more than 30 million in need of aid.