Fighting has escalated on four fronts in western and southeastern Sudan, between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, with dozens killed and injured in the capital, Khartoum, and the cities of El Fasher, Sennar, and El Obeid, as a result of intense aerial and artillery bombardment by both sides.
The Emergency Lawyers Association announced that “36 civilians were killed and 116 injured in the states of Sennar and North Kordofan as a result of the mutual aerial and artillery bombardment between the two parties, while medical sources said that the number of dead in the city of Sennar alone reached more than 45 after violent clashes.”
In this context, Matilda Vo, spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council in Sudan, stated that “children in Sudan are dying of hunger every day, and this is heartbreaking.”
The Sudanese Radio Dabanga website quoted the spokeswoman as saying: “The situation in Sudan is catastrophic, as there is no humanitarian organization or person who wants to see famine in Sudan.”
Matilda Foe’s statement came in response to a joint report issued by three humanitarian organizations, which announced that “children in Sudan are dying of hunger due to a historic famine in Sudan amid the ongoing war.”
“Sudan is experiencing a famine of historic proportions,” the report by the three organizations, the Norwegian Refugee Council, the Danish Refugee Council, and Mercy Corps, said last week. “People are dying of hunger every day, yet the focus remains on semantic debates and legal definitions.”
The report added that “more than 25 million people, more than half the population, are suffering from severe food insecurity. Many families have been forced to eat one meal a day for months and have been forced to eat leaves or insects.”
“People can no longer afford food because they have been displaced, because they have lost everything because the economy has collapsed,” Matilda said. “They have no way of making a living, and because prices have gone up all over the country. That’s why people are going hungry, not because Sudan doesn’t produce enough food, it’s about affordability.”
The fighting between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces has been ongoing since mid-April 2023, resulting in the deaths of about 13,100 people, while the total number of displaced people in Sudan has reached about 7.9 million people, and about 2.1 million people to neighboring countries, according to United Nations data.
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2024-09-13 01:31:33