A global aid official urged the international community on Sunday to provide more funds to help Sudanese citizens trapped from a month due to a military conflict between rival generals in the African nation.
Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said his organizations have received only 7% of the $45 million they appealed for to help those inside Sudan. The war pits the military against the powerful paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
“The needs are real,” he told The Associated Press in an interview in Cairo. “Sudanese people need urgent support, urgent solidarity and urgent interest.”
Sudan was plunged into chaos in April when simmering tensions between the military, led by Abdel Fattah Burhan, and the RSF, commanded by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere.
The conflict has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields. Many residents live without water and electricity, and the country’s health care system has nearly collapsed. The sprawling region of Darfur saw some of the worst bouts of violence in the conflict, and the fighting there has morphed into ethnic clashes with RSF and allied Arab militia targeting ethnic African communities. Clashes also intensified earlier this month in the provinces of South Kordofan and West Kordofan. A rebel group attacked Kadugli, the provincial capital of South Kordofan and clashed with the military, killing and displacing civilians, according to the U.N. mission in Sudan. In al-Fula, the provincial capital of West Kordofan, fighting erupted for days between the military and the RSF before local officials helped stop the clashes, the U.N. mission, known as UNITAMS, said Sunday. But government offices, banks and the offices of the U.N. and other aid agencies were looted, it said
More than 3.4 million people were forced to flee their homes to safer areas inside Sudan, according to the United Nations’ migration agency. Over a million crossed into neighboring countries, including Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, Ethiopia and Central African Republic, the agency added.
