The children and young people receiving help from SOS Children's Villages in Khartoum were evacuated from their homes last week. Now they are in temporary accommodation. Petra Nyberg, Programme Manager at SOS Children's Villages, explains how the situation became increasingly acute when the nearby military base began to enter the Children's Village area.
"We managed to get in touch with the armed forces and get them to pause for a while so we could get out with the children and families. They had to leave in the children's school buses.
To be evacuated further
99 people, including 68 children, 11 carers and eight local employees, were allowed to leave the area. Many of the children SOS Children's Villages helps have already gone through trauma. Now another difficult time awaits. The hope is to be able to evacuate children and foster families to safer places in the countryside instead of living in Khartoum.
Even before the fighting broke out, 8.5 million children were in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UNICEF.
"Right now, they are mostly on the floor of their homes so as not to be near windows. They can't go to school, they don't get food that you're used to at set times. Of course it's a very unsafe and frightening thing for the children," says Petra Nyberg.