Photo credit: Al Jazeera
The Sudanese city of al-Fashir has been cut off from the world by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for more than 15 months.
SBS News reports that no food or aid delivery has been allowed in. Civilians now worry that the only thing awaiting them is death.
A woman told in the besieged city told SBS, “If you don’t rescue us, I swear by God, no treatment or hospitals are available, only death.
“We have nothing left for us but death.”
Hundreds of thousands of people are under siege in al-Fashir, the Sudanese army’s last holdout in the western Dafur region. They are running out of food and coming under constant artillery and drone barrages. Some flee violent attacks and a cholera outbreak in surrounding areas.
The city is the biggest remaining frontline in the region between Sudan’s army and the RSF. It is under fire at a pivotal point in a civil war now well into its third year.
The RSF has blocked food supplies and sources speaking to Reuters have said aid convoys trying to reach the city have been attacked. :Prices for the goods that traders are able to smuggle in cost more than five times the national average.
Now, residents are facing famine.
Mohamed Dodah, a refugee and Zaghawa community leader who fled to the city said, “If you could eat breakfast, you’ll wait for the next day to eat another meal. They’re suffering right now. They’re dying daily.”
Some civilians are left with nothing to eat except hay and peanut oil waste, which are typically used to feed animals. But even those are running out..
Deputy spokesman for the United Nations’ Secretary-General Farhan Haq said civilians in al-Fashir are at a breaking point. He said, “Community-run kitchens have shut down due to a lack of food stocks, and some residents have reportedly resorted to consuming animal feed.”
According to the UN, half of Sudan’s 50 million population is facing acute hunger after more than two years of civil war between RSF and the Sudanese army.
In Darfur, the UN has declared famine in 11 locations.
UNICEF estimates over 330,000 people are facing malnutrition in the city of al-Fashir alone due to a total blockade of aid by RSF militants.
Nathan Raymond, a human rights investigator who leads the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab and has worked with the UN to better understand the hunger crisis said, while the people in Gaza have aid deliveries severely limited for several months now, in al-Fashir, it’s been over a year of total blockade
