Khartoum — The Humanitarian Affairs Commission in North Darfur State announced the death of three children due to hunger and the siege imposed on El-Fasher for more than 18 months by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), as health conditions deteriorate inside shelters and displacement camps in the city.
The state’s Humanitarian Affairs Commissioner, Dr. Abbas Youssef Adam, said the city is witnessing a troubling rise in child deaths caused by acute diarrhea and malnutrition, noting that El-Fasher currently hosts around 198,000 families—nearly 945,000 people—most of them displaced persons and residents affected by the war.
He appealed to the national Humanitarian Commission and the Darfur Regional Government’s Emergency Committee to intervene urgently and provide additional aid to confront the crisis, pointing to the launch of the second phase of the “Sixth Leap” of humanitarian assistance provided by the state government through shelters and mosques in the city.
El-Fasher has seen some of the fiercest attacks in recent weeks since the war began, leaving dozens dead and about 260,000 people trapped inside the city.
There is only one exit from the city, west toward Tawila, 70 kilometers away, along a road littered with corpses, according to those who fled. Nazir Mahni Ali said he went four days without drinking anything but rainwater as he took the dangerous western route out of El-Fasher, fleeing RSF attacks on the only city in North Darfur still under army control.
Ali described conditions in besieged El-Fasher, surrounded by RSF since May 2024, as “extremely harsh because of hunger and thirst.” He explained to AFP: “We only ate ambaz for breakfast and lunch”—the peanut shells usually used as animal fodder.
AFP spoke with three survivors who reached Tawila: Ali, Ahmed, and Siddeeq.
Before fleeing to Tawila, Ali and his family had already been displaced from their home in Al-Salam neighborhood to a school where residents were sheltering from heavy bombardment.
Ali recalled: “We were at the school when my father and younger brother went out to work. They were hit by a drone strike from the RSF. My father died instantly, and my brother was taken to hospital.”
After his brother received what little medical care was available, Ali and his family decided to flee to Tawila. “We took the northwestern route but were ambushed by RSF fighters in the street. We were beaten, looted, and stripped of everything we owned.”
Despite the hardship, Ali’s family walked on “for four days, reaching Tawila on the fifth. Along the way, we ate only ambaz and had no water… we drank rainwater.” In Tawila, Ali’s family still needs “shelter and food.”
Adel Ismail Ahmed, 24, fled Abu Shouk camp on the outskirts of El-Fasher after “an artillery shell hit our home.”
He told AFP: “My brother and I were at home when it happened. I broke my arm and suffered shrapnel injuries to my spine and leg, while my brother was hit in the neck and chest.”
Unable to afford treatment, Ahmed said: “We left El-Fasher before our wounds healed. We spent two days on the road.”
In a town between El-Fasher and Tawila, “someone dug a pit for us under a tree where we hid all day, then moved again after sunset” to avoid RSF fighters.
When they reached Tawila, controlled by the Sudan Liberation Movement and active in parts of Sudan, Ahmed and his brother were taken to a hospital run by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). “They cleaned our wounds, and I’m now awaiting surgery,” he said, adding that all he wants is medical care and work to feed his family.
After repeated shelling of Abu Shouk, Mohamed Siddeeq, 28, also decided to flee, saying “life had become unbearable.”
RSF fighters stopped him on the road, “accusing us of collaborating with the army, though we told them we were civilians.”
Siddeeq was detained with four others and beaten with sticks “to force us to confess.” After four days in captivity, “I found a chance to escape and ran.”
He said he still cannot move his left hand easily, and his knee remains swollen.
Siddeeq recalled that hunger was the worst problem in El-Fasher, where the price of ambaz had more than tripled. He added that during bombardments, civilians dug pits to hide in since there were no shelters—“and we couldn’t even cover the holes.”
He noted: “Life in Tawila is much better than El-Fasher. But we still need aid.”
For nearly a year and a half, the RSF has been trying to seize El-Fasher through repeated offensives and a tight siege from multiple directions, creating acute shortages of food, medicine, and basic services, and worsening humanitarian conditions to unprecedented levels.
Observers say the humanitarian situation in El-Fasher represents one of the gravest consequences of the war in Sudan, amid growing fears of famine in the besieged city, with no way to deliver aid to the trapped population.
Al-Yurae— Al-Quds Al-Arabi
