More than 30 million in need of aid in Sudan, UN warns

The United Nations warned on Monday that more than 30 million people are in need of urgent aid in Sudan.

An ongoing power struggle between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) since April 2023 has torn the country apart and plunged it into famine.

In five areas across Sudan famine has already been declared with food shortage expected to be announced in five more areas by May, with 8.1 million people currently on the brink of mass starvation.

To save the Sudanese people from imminent starvation, the UN has launched a $4.2 billion call for funds, targeting 20.9 million people across Sudan from a total of 30.4 million people it said are in need in what it called "an unprecedented humanitarian crisis".

Till now, tens of thousands of people have been killed and more than eight million internally displaced, which, in addition to 2.7 million displaced before the war, has made Sudan the world's largest internal displacement crisis.

An additional 3.3 million people have fled across Sudan's borders to escape the war, which means over a quarter of the country's pre-war population, estimated at around 50 million, are now uprooted.

Sudan at 'catastrophic breaking point', UN warns

A UN agency warns that the dire conditions in Sudan has placed the African nation on the brink of a "cataclysmic breaking point".

Meantime, the Sudanese army denies there is famine in the country, blaming the enemy for the shortages in the country.

However, both the Sudanese army and the RSF have been accused of weaponizing starvation as a tool to inflict enemy casualties.

The Sudanese army, allegedly, staged an airstrike on southern Khartoum on Sunday, killing ten and wounding over 30 Sudanese civilians, according to volunteer rescue workers.

The airstrike targeted the market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” according to the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.

Since April 2023, the Sudanese army and RSF have been engaged in an internal strife.

The capital Khartoum has witnessed some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.

The Sudanese army, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary forces.

Out of the 11.5 million people currently displaced across Sudan, nearly a third has fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.

Both the RSF and the Sudanese army have been repeatedly accusing the opposite side of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.

Weeks ago, the UN raised the alarm about the dire conditions of Sudanese women. It said it was "ashamed" over its failure to stem Sudan's gender violence.

“I feel ashamed that we have not been able to protect you, and I feel ashamed for my fellow men for what they have done,” said Tom Fletcher, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

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