The World Food Programme (WFP) has stated that as many as 260,000 people are now at risk of starvation in the Sudanese city of El Fasher, including 150,000 children. It was also noted that 63 people had died of malnutrition in a single week in August. The Famine Review Committee (FRC) are said to have warned that the region is “rapidly becoming one of the world’s most severe hunger crises.”
Mohammed Saleh Dhu al-Bayt, director of the displaced persons shelter in El Fasher commented: “All those who are in El Fasher are suffering severely from starvation. All services are completely suspended … there is no education or any other activities, people’s lives have become just a search for food.”
Among the parents desperately trying to find food for their children is 38-year-old Aisha Hassan. She said that “the hunger affected their body, they became weak, thin, less mobile, less talkative, and we lost hope. I wish I had died before seeing my daughters and my husband in this condition. I wish I had never been born in Sudan. This is the worst phase of my life. We don’t know how long we will have to endure this suffering. There are no solutions in sight. We have lost our patience.”
A choice between starvation and death
It has also been reported that El Fasher is now a besieged and battered city, seen as “the last bastion of resistance against a relentless paramilitary force in Sudan’s war-torn Darfur region”, where “the final vestiges of hope are being ground into a sludgy, desperate paste”.
The city’s last functioning hospital has now been bombed over 30 times, and in that refuge somewhere between 30 and 40 severely malnourished children arrive every single day. Their emaciated bodies are said to be “a testament to a city being systematically starved into submission. There is nothing to give them. Instead, they are fed pressed peanuts, a coarse feed normally reserved for cows, camels, and donkeys”.
Dr. Omar Selik, a doctor at the hospital commented: “Even we’re eating animal feed”.
The 260 000 civilians still trapped within the city’s confines are now faced with a stark choice. If they stay in El Fasher they risk being starved or bombed, but if they leave they risk being robbed, killed, or sexually assaulted by the paramilitary forces who dominate the perilous road to safety.
Dr Selik noted that “people seem to have forgotten us. Oh my God, it’s a very painful story.”
At least 18 killed in RSF assault on Sudan’s El-Fasher
On at least one occasion, RSF forces have broken into El Fasher, with deadly consequences.
On Tuesday 16 September it was reported that medical sources within the city said that a least 18 people had been killed that day during an incursion by Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The death toll was given by two medical sources, who only spoke on condition of anonymity. Ot was also noted that the death toll could be much higher as this toll “only accounts for victims brought to the Sud and El-Fasher hospitals”.
According to the sources, it is believed that an “unknown number of others are believed to have been buried mainly in the southern sector of the Abu Shouk displacement camp on the city’s outskirts”.
A resistance committee which has been set up and is one of hundreds of grassroots groups documenting atrocities in the war, commented that Rapid Support Force fighters had been advancing since Monday 15 September from the north of the city, where attacks were still going on.
The resistance committee said that “several civilians were killed in their homes, and others were detained under mysterious circumstances.”
It also reported intense shelling, heavy clashes, and the continued presence of drones over El-Fasher for a second consecutive day.
A witness trying to leave the state capital told AFP: “RSF forces have installed artillery and defensive positions throughout the Abu Shouk camp,” while another witness was reported to have said that the army and its allies were currently in the military headquarters.
Sudan expert Mohaned Elnour of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy commented:
“If the RSF manages to take control of the headquarters, it could mean complete control of the city. We could expect a terrible catastrophe, where horrific crimes could be committed.”
Humanitarian aid is said to be “virtually non-existent”.
Comment
The civil war in Sudan has now been going on for nearly two and a half years, having begun on 15 April 2023. In that time, the world has largely looked away, seemingly uninterested in the plight of many thousands of innocent people, in what is, even in today’s very troubled world, the biggest humanitarian crisis in the world today.
In her first week in office the new foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper rightly highlighted the plight of those going through the nightmare in Sudan. This needs to be built upon.
Diplomatic pressure must be exerted as a matter of the utmost urgency on the United Arab Emirates, who are supporting the RSF to help prevent a massacre in El Fasher. There is still time to prevent a massacre if western countries can put enough pressure on the UAE.
Surely this must be done.
Avaaz
Avaaz is asking people to email the Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper at fcdo.correspondence@fcdo.gov.uk and make the following points:
Thank you for highlighting the plight of people across Sudan during your first week as Foreign Secretary
The people in El Fasher, Darfur, cannot wait – fighters are advancing, the city may fall any moment, and experts fear mass atrocities when that happens
Diplomatic pressure on the United Arab Emirates who are backing the fighters of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has helped prevent a massacre before. I urge you to use your power, now
Please pick up the phone to your UAE counterpart, demand safe, voluntary passage for civilians as well as humanitarian access, and make it clear that the UK will be watching closely what the RSF is doing in El Fasher (with the support of the UAE)
You can also help the children of Sudan here.
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