Aid workers with medical charity MSF described on Friday the “nightmare” facing the people of Sudan and appealed for the warring sides to allow humanitarian access as the civil war leads to soaring malnutrition.
The conflict between Sudanese paramilitary chief Mohamed Hamdan Daglo’s Rapid Support Forces, known as the RSF, and the regular military led by army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan has killed tens of thousands of people since it began in April last year, unleashing the world’s largest displacement crisis.
Access to the conflict zones is extremely limited, with Doctors Without Borders, which is known by its French acronym MSF, among the few international bodies still operating on the ground.
MSF said at a briefing in Nairobi that 26 million people, or about half the population, face severe food insecurity.
“We’re not talking about an emergency anymore. We’re talking about a nightmare,” said MSF coordinator Claire San Filippo, describing the malnutrition crisis as “terrifying.”
Recently back from Chad, San Filippo recalled meeting a mother of three who fled the violence in the Sudanese city of El-Fasher in Darfur, which has endured intense paramilitary attacks in recent weeks.
“She told me war is everywhere. Everywhere there are killings. Everywhere there are bombings, shootings,” San Filippo said.
It took the mother, who lost eight members of her family in the conflict, a month to reach a camp in eastern Chad.
“What she described is a nightmare. It’s simply hell,” said San Filippo, detailing how many of the refugees were women and children — most of whom had suffered from a dire lack of food, water and basic health care.
“She told me that people are simply dying everywhere.”
San Filippo said MSF recorded acute malnutrition in 32% of people in Zamzam Camp in North Darfur and Nyala in South Darfur.
The army and the RSF have been accused of repeated atrocities in the war, including targeting civilians, indiscriminate shelling of residential areas and looting or blocking aid.
Blockades forced MSF to make the “heartbreaking” decision to stop nutrition activities in Zamzam camp, where famine has been declared, San Filippo said.
“As supplies run low, we had no other choice than to stop care for 5,000 children,” she said.
Beyond the blockades, she described how health care facilities supported by MSF in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and in El-Fasher had been “looted, occupied, shelled on multiple occasions.”
Medical workers have been harassed and assaulted, she said, with front lines perilously close to the medical facilities still functioning.
“I woke up at about three, four o’clock in the morning to the sound of heavy machine gunfire,” said Lisa Searle, a doctor who spent four months working in Khartoum.
“This new wave of violence has really … shocked an already traumatized population,” she said.
She emphasized the toll on her Sudanese colleagues: “They’re facing the same trauma that the people that they’re helping are facing.”
