LOC10:00
07:00 GMT
News report by Mohammad Abdulaziz
KHARTOUM, Aug 20 (KUNA) -- Some 300,000 civilians in the besieged city of Al-Fasher, the last stronghold for the Sudanese Army in Darfur, are suffering from diseases and starvation and some have been surviving by eating animal fodder.
The army foe, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), have laid a tight siege on the city since local armed groups declared allegiance to the army, barring entry of food and necessities to the afflicted residents.
The paramilitary forces that have been battling the army on various fronts throughout Sudan have been targeting relief convoys. In June, a drone attacked a 15-truck convoy carrying food and medical supplies in Al-Koma in northern Darfur.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), in December, warned of an imminent starvation in the camps of Zamzam and Abu Shok. (The IPC is a system for analyzing and classifying the severity and magnitude of food insecurity and malnutrition. It is a multi-partner initiative that provides a common framework for decision-makers to understand and respond to food crises).
Famine has become a reality in Al-Fasher; based on a UN report affirming that the beleaguered city has been gripped with severe hunger, level five on the UN scale.
A local health official said 63 people, mostly women and children, had died in a single week due to malnutrition, while the Sudan Doctors Network reported death of 239 children from hunger in the first half of the current year, amid reports of unaccounted deaths due to the same cause outside hospitals.
UN statements affirm that 40 percent of the children aged under 15 in Al-Fasher suffer from poor feeding. They include 11 percent acute cases.
Entry of food supplies and necessities into the city has been hampered by lack of funding, violence, attacks on the relief convoys, in addition to the August rainy season.
The World Food Programme has called for an immediate and humanitarian ceasefire to relieve the estimated 300,000 people trapped inside the city, pinned down by the suffocating siege and recurring bombardment.
Leni Kinzli, the WFP communications chairperson in Sudan, said in a statement to KUNA the situation is extremely grave and the residents have not received any aid since more than a year ago. According to field reports, some families had to eat animal fodder for survival, she confirmed.
The people in Al-Fasher are on the brink of starvation. Food is ready to be sent in "but we need a cease-fire and guarantees from all the parties namely the Rapid Support Forces to secure entry of our personnel and the trucks into the city regularly," she said.
In a tactic to circumvent the siege, the WFP had managed to dispatch money via banks to the surrounded civilians. but "this carries short term impact and cannot be substituted for regular entry of supplies," Kinzli explained in the remarks to the Kuwaiti news agency.
Shelves of many stores in the city are empty and prices of some available and smuggled items are too high. Worse, the local "Al-Fasher resistance committees" declared a few days ago closure of free-food kitchens.
Adama Rejal, spokesperson of the general coordination committee for the displaced and refugees, said in remarks to KUNA that the encircled residents have been experiencing slow death due to full disappearance of the basic materials and supplies. "Animal fodder has become the people's food," he said.
Hamid Haroun, a journalist who resides in Al-Fasher, said in a statement to KUNA, describing the dire conditions, "He who does not die from the shelling, dies from starvation."
He affirmed entry of the food supplies hinges on the fighting foes' willingness to allow the passing of the convoys to the city. As to other difficulties, he has affirmed that the August season downpours have rendered the roads muddy and impassable for the convoys. "The sole solution is dropping the supplies from the air," he believes.
Some of the residents have resorted to eating residues of oil seeds although they are unhealthy particularly for children. (end)
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