High risk of famine south of Khartoum: WFP - War in Sudan
Laurent Bukera, WFP's Sudan representative and country director, said the agency had found "severe" levels of hunger in Jabal Awliya, a town around 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Khartoum.
Bukera was speaking after returning from Khartoum State, where WFP opened a new office in Omdurman, a part of greater Khartoum.
"The needs are immense," he told a press briefing in Geneva, speaking from Port Sudan.
"We saw widespread destruction, limited access to water, healthcare and electricity, and a cholera outbreak. In parts of the city, life is returning -- but many neighbourhoods remain abandoned, like a ghost city".
Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a battle for power since April 2023.
Tens of thousands of people have died and 13 million have been displaced, including four million abroad, triggering what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
"WFP is deeply concerned, and meeting basic needs -- especially food -- is critical and urgent," said Bukera.
The RSF lost control of Khartoum in March.
"Several areas in the south of the city are at high risk of famine," Bukera said.
The WFP now has access to the area and can make regular aid deliveries and said it was doing everything to bring the local population back from the brink of famine.
"The level of hunger, destitution and desperation" at the first distributions in Jabal Awliya last month was "severe, and basically confirmed the risk of famine in those areas," Bukera said.
"The international community must act now -- by stepping up funding to stop famine in the hardest-hit areas and to invest in Sudan's recovery."
Funding shortfall
Famine has been declared in five areas across Sudan, including three displacement camps near El-Fasher in the southwest.
It has been all but confirmed in El-Fasher itself, where aid agencies say a lack of access to data has prevented an official famine declaration.
Last Wednesday, five aid workers were killed in besieged El-Fasher in an area controlled by the RSF.
Across the country, nearly 25 million people are suffering dire food insecurity.
WFP is now reaching four million people per month in Sudan -- a near four-fold increase since the start of 2024.
It aims to reach seven million monthly, prioritising areas facing famine or at extreme risk.
Bukera said WFP was short of more than $500 million for emergency food and cash assistance over the coming six months -- and short of $700 million overall, across all its operations in Sudan.
With displaced people expected to return to heavily-damaged areas like Khartoum, the pressure on already over-stretched resources would intensify.
Bukera said food could bring an element of stability in Khartoum and "anchor the peace".
"This is the moment to stand with the Sudanese people as they rebuild their lives... after two years of devastating conflict, we see light at the end of the tunnel."
Follow us on:
Short link:
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Egypt Independent
16 hours ago
- Egypt Independent
Aid airdrops into Gaza are '100 times more costly' than land routes, UNRWA says
Dropping aid into Gaza from the sky is 100 times more expensive than delivering it in trucks via land routes, the head of UNRWA, the main United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, said Friday. 'Airdrops are at least 100 times more costly than trucks. Trucks carry twice as much aid as planes,' Philippe Lazzarini wrote on X. Airdrops have been conducted by the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Egypt and others since Israel allowed them again last week. The UN warned earlier that airdrops are dangerous as well as costly, while Palestinians in Gaza have told CNN they resent having no choice but to chase after airdropped aid 'like dogs.' 'If there is political will to allow airdrops – which are highly costly, insufficient & inefficient, there should be similar political will to open the road crossings,' the UNRWA commissioner-general said. Lazzarini said his agency has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid waiting for the green light to enter Gaza. Israel insists on inspecting all trucks before they cross into the territory. Lazzarini added that during the ceasefire that lasted from January to March, UNRWA was able to bring in 500 to 600 trucks a day. 'No alternative to the UN coordinated response with UNRWA as the backbone had provided similar results,' he said, in an apparent swipe at the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which sidelined the UN in its role in distributing aid.
Al-Ahram Weekly
19 hours ago
- Al-Ahram Weekly
Chaos, gangs, Israeli gunfire: Gaza aid fails to reach most needy: AFP report - War on Gaza
The trickle of food aid Israel allows to enter Gaza after nearly 22 months of war is seized by Palestinians risking their lives under fire, looted by gangs or diverted in chaotic circumstances rather than reaching those most in need, UN agencies, aid groups and analysts say. After images of malnourished children stoked an international outcry, aid has started to be delivered to the territory once more, but on a scale deemed woefully insufficient by international organisations. Every day, AFP correspondents on the ground see desperate crowds rushing towards food convoys or the sites of aid drops by Arab and European air forces. On Thursday, in Al-Zawayda in central Gaza, emaciated Palestinians rushed to pallets parachuted from a plane, jostling and tearing packages from each other in a cloud of dust. "Hunger has driven people to turn on each other. People are fighting each other with knives," Amir Zaqot, who came seeking aid, told AFP. To avoid disturbances, World Food Programme (WFP) drivers have been instructed to stop before their intended destination and let people help themselves. But to no avail. "A truck wheel almost crushed my head, and I was injured retrieving the bag," sighed a man, carrying a bag of flour on his head, in the Zikim area, in the northern Gaza Strip. 'Truly tragic' Mohammad Abu Taha went at dawn to a distribution site near Rafah in the south to join the queue and reserve his spot. He said there were already "thousands waiting, all hungry, for a bag of flour or a little rice and lentils." "Suddenly, we heard gunshots..... There was no way to escape. People started running, pushing and shoving each other, children, women, the elderly," said the 42-year-old. "The scene was truly tragic: blood everywhere, wounded, dead." Nearly 1,400 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip while waiting for aid since May 27, the majority by the Israeli army, the United Nations said on Friday. International organisations have for months condemned the restrictions imposed by the Israeli authorities on aid distribution in Gaza, including refusing to issue border crossing permits, slow customs clearance, limited access points, and imposing dangerous routes. On Tuesday, in Zikim, the Israeli army "changed loading plans for WFP, mixing cargo unexpectedly. The convoy was forced to leave early, without proper security," said a senior UN official who spoke on condition of anonymity. In the south of Gaza, at the Kerem Shalom border crossing, "there are two possible routes to reach our warehouses (in central Gaza)," said an NGO official, who also preferred to remain anonymous. "One is fairly safe, the other is regularly the scene of fighting and looting, and that's the one we're forced to take." 'Darwinian experiment' Some of the aid is looted by gangs -- who often directly attack warehouses -- and diverted to traders who resell it at exorbitant prices, according to several humanitarian sources and experts. "It becomes this sort of Darwinian social experiment of the survival of the fittest," said Muhammad Shehada, visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). "People who are the most starved in the world and do not have the energy must run and chase after a truck and wait for hours and hours in the sun and try to muscle people and compete for a bag of flour," he said. Jean Guy Vataux, emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Gaza, added: "We're in an ultra-capitalist system, where traders and corrupt gangs send kids to risk life and limb at distribution points or during looting. It's become a new profession." This food is then resold to "those who can still afford it" in the markets of Gaza City, where the price of a 25-kilogramme bag of flour can exceed $400, he added. 'Never found proof' Israel has repeatedly accused, without evidence, Hamas of looting aid supplied by the UN, which has been delivering the bulk of aid since the start of the war. The Israeli authorities have used this accusation to justify the total blockade they imposed on Gaza between March and May, and the subsequent establishment of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private organisation supported by Israel and the United States which has become the main aid distributor, sidelining UN agencies. However, for more than two million inhabitants of Gaza the GHF has just four distribution points, which the UN describes as a "death trap". "Hamas... has been stealing aid from the Gaza population many times by shooting Palestinians," said the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. But according to senior Israeli military officials quoted by the New York Times on July 26, Israel "never found proof" that the group had "systematically stolen aid" from the UN. Weakened by the war with Israel, which has seen most of its senior leadership killed, Hamas today is made up of "basically decentralised autonomous cells" said Shehada. He said while Hamas fighters still hunker down in each Gaza neighbourhood in tunnels or destroyed buildings, they are not visible on the ground "because Israel has been systematically going after them". Aid workers told AFP that during the ceasefire that preceded the March blockade, the Gaza police -- which includes many Hamas members -- helped secure humanitarian convoys, but that the current power vacuum was fostering insecurity and looting. "UN agencies and humanitarian organisations have repeatedly called on Israeli authorities to facilitate and protect aid convoys and storage sites in our warehouses across the Gaza Strip," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead at Oxfam. "These calls have largely been ignored," she added. 'All kinds of criminal activities' The Israeli army is also accused of having equipped Palestinian criminal networks in its fight against Hamas and of allowing them to plunder aid. "The real theft of aid since the beginning of the war has been carried out by criminal gangs, under the watch of Israeli forces, and they were allowed to operate in proximity to the Kerem Shalom crossing point into Gaza," Jonathan Whittall, Palestinian territories chief of the UN humanitarian office (OCHA), told reporters in May. According to Israeli and Palestinian media reports, an armed group called the Popular Forces, made up of members of a Bedouin tribe led by Yasser Abu Shabab, is operating in the southern region under Israeli control. The ECFR describes Abu Shabab as leading a "criminal gang operating in the Rafah area that is widely accused of looting aid trucks". The Israeli authorities themselves acknowledged in June that they had armed Palestinian gangs opposed to Hamas, without directly naming the one led by Abu Shabab. Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Moshe Dayan Center of Tel Aviv University, said many of the gang's members were implicated in "all kinds of criminal activities, drug smuggling, and things like that". "None of this can happen in Gaza without the approval, at least tacit, of the Israeli army," said a humanitarian worker in Gaza, asking not to be named. *This story was edited by Ahram Online. Follow us on: Facebook Instagram Whatsapp Short link:
Egypt Independent
6 days ago
- Egypt Independent
'We are not dogs': Palestinians condemn humiliation of chasing after airdropped aid in Gaza
In the central Gazan town of Al-Zawayda, scores of Palestinians rushed to collect boxes of aid that were dropped from the sky on Monday. For many, the food in these boxes will be the only meal they eat today. But many say that having no choice but to chase after airdropped aid is an insult to their dignity. 'This aid is disgraceful. We are not dogs to be made to run after aid,' Ahmad Faiz Fayyad told CNN. 'We'd rather die of hunger with dignity than die in humiliation and filth.' Jordan and the United Arab Emirates carried out their first airdrops into Gaza over the weekend, attempting to combat starvation in the enclave caused by Israel's blockade. 'The people doing this have no shame,' said Fayyad. 'We want the aid to come in by land and be distributed through institutions, so that people can receive it with dignity and honor.' Fayyad said he did not collect any aid and did not want to, while dozens of others scrambled to reach the UAE Red Crescent-marked boxes. As a crowd of people picked up the boxes from the ground, gunshots rang out, causing many to panic and flee, CNN video showed. One man said he managed to collect some flour, but that it would not be enough to feed his family of eight. Another elderly woman said she hadn't managed to reach the food because she was almost crushed in the crowd. Others were grateful to receive food, but said the method of airdropping aid only risked more violence. 'I took this box, thank God. It will help ease the hunger we're facing. Praise be to God and thank you to everyone who helped us,' Mohammad Al-Bara'a told CNN. 'This is enough for us, but you can see and hear what's happening—people are fighting to the death over aid. There are no words to describe what you're seeing.' The United Nations has warned that airdropping aid into Gaza is 'very, very expensive' and often dangerous. 'Why use airdrops when you can drive hundreds of trucks through the borders,' Juliette Touma, a spokesperson for the main UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told CNN last week. 'It's much easier, more effective, faster, cheaper and safer.'
