Aid workers working with people fleeing Sudan to neighboring Chad are warning of a worsening humanitarian situation in Sudan's Darfur region, where war has created near-famine conditions.
Tammam Aloudat, who works for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in South Darfur, returned from a mission in Niyala last week and spoke about the hunger crisis gripping the region.
“There are children in therapeutic feeding centers, where we receive malnourished children who are over one year old, they look like they are four or five months old,” Aloudat said.
“What I want to talk about are the pockets of severe malnutrition that they cannot cope with on their own, and many children who once they reach that stage of malnutrition, they stop eating even though there is a certain amount of food available,” he continued.
Aloudat said he hoped authorities' announcement this week about reopening the Adre border post would allow more UN aid to reach the worst-hit areas, but many obstacles remained.
He said recent rains had caused a vital bridge to collapse in South Darfur, making it nearly impossible for large amounts of aid to reach the area.
In the latest, members of Sudan's paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), went on a rampage through a village in the central region, looting, burning and killing at least 85 people, including women and children, authorities and residents said Saturday. The attack was the latest atrocity in the country's 18-month-old conflict.
The RSF began attacking the Galgani area of Sennar, a central Sudanese province, in late July. Last week, RSF members “indiscriminately opened fire on unarmed villagers” after they resisted an attempted kidnapping and sexual assault of women and children, the Sudanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
More than 150 villagers were injured, the ministry said.
The RSF has been repeatedly accused of massacres, rapes and other serious violations across the country since the war began in April last year, when rising tensions between the Sudanese military and the RSF erupted into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere.
Both sides have accused each other of attacking civilians and obstructing aid since the war began.
Meanwhile diplomats from the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, the African Union and the UN have been trying to restart talks aimed at defusing the fighting.
However, the Sudanese military has boycotted the event and the RSF sent a delegation to Geneva without taking part in the meetings. (uh)
