Displaced children carry packages of humanitarian aid in the city of Gedaref, eastern Sudan (French)
The Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs accused the Rapid Support Forces of detaining humanitarian aid trucks that were on their way to the city of El Fasher, western Sudan, while the head of the "Doctors Without Borders" organization summed up the needs of the refugees who fled en masse from violence to "water, food and dignity."
The Sudanese Foreign Ministry said - in a statement - that what it described as militias detained a number of humanitarian aid trucks from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) that were on their way to El Fasher to contribute to containing the food and health crisis in the camps for the displaced, especially the spread of cases of malnutrition among children.
She added in her statement that the support forces carried out their declared threats to prevent the arrival of humanitarian aid convoys via the Al-Dabba-Malit-Al-Fasher route, as they mobilized numbers of their members near Mellit to block the path to humanitarian aid convoys and seize that aid.
She pointed out that since the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, the support forces have escalated their attacks on safe villages in the states of Al-Jazira, North and South Kordofan.
The Rapid Support elements were accused of attacking 28 villages in Al-Jazira State alone during the past two weeks, killing 43 civilians, plundering the property and food crops of the citizens of these villages, and turning large numbers of them into displaced persons, according to what was stated in a Sudanese Foreign Ministry statement.
The Ministry referred to the investigative report by the American CNN channel, which documented the practices of support personnel against villagers, including acts of forced labor and forced recruitment of children.
On the other hand, Christos Christou said in an interview with Agence France-Presse after returning from a trip during which he visited refugee camps in eastern Chad and Darfur in Sudan, “I saw for myself that Doctors Without Borders was doing its utmost to provide water, even if that was outside the scope of its expertise.” Medical organization.
Christou referred to the lack of food, and pointed out that the refugees also asked to obtain something else, but intangible, which is “dignity.”
The fighting since April 15, 2023 between the army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti), the former second-in-command in the military authority, has led to the deaths of thousands of Sudanese, the displacement of about 8 million others, and the flight of more than 600,000.
Christo was able to go to Darfur, located on the border with Chad, to inspect the operations of Doctors Without Borders on the ground.
He recounted, "Once you cross the border and take the road leading to Darfur, you can see and imagine the level of violence and atrocities that have occurred in recent months," especially the level of destruction in El Geneina in West Darfur.
Source: Al Jazeera + French