Sudan war: Three children dying every day as hunger and diseases devastate besieged El Fasher
According to the United Nations, the city’s 260,000 residents, including 130,000 children, are now relying on “Ambaz,” a type of animal fodder, as their main source of food. Health facilities are struggling to operate amid dwindling medical supplies, with many clinics reportedly closed.
At least three children are dying every day in El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, as hunger and disease sweep through the besieged city, where residents have been cut off from food and aid for months under the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) blockade, according to the Sudan Doctors Network.
The network said the situation in El Fasher has deteriorated sharply, with widespread malnutrition and disease claiming the lives of children daily.
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“Every passing day, we lose at least three children in El Fasher due to malnutrition, disease, and the scarcity of health and humanitarian resources,” said Razan Mahdi, a spokeswoman for the Sudan Doctors Network, in a statement issued on Friday.
El Fasher has been under a strict siege by the RSF since April 2024, and conditions worsened in late September when the forces completed a 57-kilometre earth barrier around the city, tightening control over all exit routes. The blockade has led to severe shortages of food, medicine, and fuel, with basic commodities now nearly unavailable.
According to the United Nations, the city’s 260,000 residents, including 130,000 children, are now relying on “Ambaz,” a type of animal fodder, as their main source of food. Health facilities are struggling to operate amid dwindling medical supplies, with many clinics reportedly closed.
The Sudan Doctors Network warned that the humanitarian situation has reached a “terrible deterioration,” with child mortality rates rising sharply and no sign of humanitarian corridors being opened to deliver aid. The group said the continuous siege has pushed conditions “beyond comprehension.”
The RSF has recently intensified its shelling of the Al-Daraja Al-Oula neighbourhood, one of the few remaining areas inhabited by tens of thousands of besieged civilians, after making significant military advances since August.
The same forces have carried out raids on all houses in the neighbourhoods they recently captured, burning them down. Its members are also reportedly carrying out summary executions, extortion, and sexual assaults against those fleeing the city.
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