Fighting in Sudan’s Kordofan region that has killed hundreds and ongoing violence in Darfur — the epicentres of the country’s conflict — have worsened Sudan’s humanitarian crisis, with aid workers warning of limited access to assistance.
The United Nations said more than 450 civilians, including at least 35 children, were killed during the weekend of July 12 in attacks in villages surrounding the town of Bara in North Kordofan province.
“The suffering in Kordofan deepens with each passing day,” Mercy Corps Country Director for Sudan, Kadry Furany, said in a statement shared with The Associated Press. “Communities are trapped along active and fast changing front lines, unable to flee, unable to access basic needs or lifesaving assistance.”
At least 60 killed in Bara over the last week
Sudan plunged into war after simmering tensions between the army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) escalated to fighting in April 2023. The violence has killed at least 40,000 people and created one of the world’s worst displacement and hunger crises, according to humanitarian organisations.
In recent months, much of the fighting has been concentrated in the Darfur and Kordofan regions.
On Thursday, the U.N. human rights office confirmed that since July 10, the RSF has killed at least 60 civilians in the town of Bara, while civil society groups reported up to 300 people were killed, the office said.
A military airstrike on Thursday in Bara killed at least 11 people, all from the same family, according to the U.N. office. Meanwhile, between July 10 and 14, the army killed at least 23 civilians and injured over two dozen others after striking two villages in West Kordofan.
An aid worker with Mercy Corps said his brother was fatally shot on July 13 during an attack on the village of Um Seimima in El Obeid City in North Kordofan, Grace Wairima Ndungu, the group’s communications manager told AP.
Furany said that movement between the western and eastern areas of the Kordofan region is “practically impossible.”
The intensified fighting forced Mercy Corps to temporarily suspend operations in three out of four localities, with access beyond Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, now being in “serious doubt,” Furany said, as a safe sustained humanitarian corridor is needed.
Fighting in Kordofan worsens displacement
Mathilde Vu, an aid worker with the Norwegian Refugee Council who is often based in Port Sudan, told AP that fighting has intensified in North Kordofan and West Kordofan over the past several months.
“A large number of villages are being destroyed, burned to the ground, people being displaced,” she said. “What is extremely worrying about the Kordofan is that there is very little information and not a lot of organisations are able to support. It is a complete war zone there.”
Marwan Taher, a project coordinator with humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders, told AP that military operations in Kordofan heightened insecurity prompting scores of people to flee to Darfur, a region already in a dire humanitarian situation.
Though exact figures are yet to be confirmed, Taher estimated that hundreds were recently displaced from Kordofan to Tawila in North Darfur province. The NRC said that since April, Tawila has already received 379,000 people escaping violence in famine-hit Zamzam Camp and Al-Fashir.
Meanwhile, the International Organisation for Migration recently reported that over 46,000 people were displaced from different areas in West Kordofan in May alone due to clashes between warring parties.
Taher said those fleeing Kordofan to Tawila walk long distances with barely enough clothes and little water, and sleep on the streets until they arrive at the area they want to settle in. The new wave of displacement has brought diseases, including measles, which began spreading in parts of Zalingi in West Darfur in March and April as camps received people fleeing Kordofan.
Flooding and attacks worsen Darfur’s already dire situation
Aid workers also warned about ongoing fighting in Darfur. Vu said there have been “uninterrupted campaigns of destruction” against civilians in North Darfur.
“In Darfur there’s been explicit targeting of civilians. There’s been explicit execution,” she said.
Shelling killed five children Wednesday in Al-Fashir in North Darfur, according to U.N. spokesperson Stephanie Tremblay. Meanwhile, between July 14 and 15, heavy rains and flooding displaced over 400 people and destroyed dozens of homes in Dar As Salam, North Darfur.
With a looming rainy season, a cholera outbreak and food insecurity, the situation in Darfur is “getting worse every day and that’s what war is,” said Taher.
