Sudan famine spreading to besieged cities, hunger monitor warns

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The global hunger monitoring network said famine has spread to two more areas of Sudan including El Fasher, where paramilitaries have been accused of mass killings, abductions and rape since capturing the city last week.

The Integrated Food Security Phase network (IPC) said there was “reasonable evidence” to classify El Fasher in Darfur and Kadugli in south Kordofan in the most catastrophic stage of hunger, known as IPC 5.

Both cities have since last year been surrounded and starved of supplies by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemeti.

The RSF last week over-ran El Fasher, driving the Sudanese Armed Forces and allied former rebels from their last stronghold in the western Sudan, ending an 18-month siege. In the final weeks, civilians trapped in the city under bombardment said even the animal feed they were depending on for survival had run out.

Kadugli has been similarly besieged but the plight of its population has received less attention.

Sudan has been convulsed by civil war since 2023 when Hemeti became embroiled in a power struggle with former allies from the SAF, leading to what UN agencies describe as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Overall an estimated 21.2mn people — 45 per cent of the population — are facing high levels of acute food insecurity, the IPC said.

The RSF-installed government in Darfur has called on aid agencies to provide relief to El Fasher, pledging humanitarian corridors into the area, and to replace the militia with policing units.

In statements the RSF has acknowledged that atrocities have taken place, and pledged to hold those responsible accountable.

However, aid workers from UN and other agencies, most of whom had been unable to reach inside the city since April last year, said conditions remain precarious, and there was a risk that the arrival of aid could draw people into danger.

There were up to 1.5mn people in and around El Fasher before a series of RSF attacks earlier this year drove out the displaced population camped on the city’s outskirts.

The UN estimated 250,000 people were left trapped in the city when it fell last week. But the fate of tens of thousands remains unclear, with reports that many are still trapped, in hiding or are being held in outlying areas.

Sheldon Yett, head of Unicef in Sudan, who had just returned from Darfur, said the condition of those who have succeeded in fleeing the city, and the accounts of atrocities they brought with them, were among the worst he had seen and heard in more than 30 years working in war zones.

“This is a population that didn’t have access to basic services including basic nutrition. There were very few medical services. Antibiotics were not arriving. They are coming out of El Fasher showing the effects,” he said.  

The prosecutor’s office at the International Criminal Court in The Hague said on Monday it was “taking immediate steps . . . to preserve and collect relevant evidence” of potential war crimes and crimes against humanity” in the city.