"Life has been completely disrupted." The displaced people of Darfur are crying out for help due to the clashes in Sudan : Africa
The bloody confrontations between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, in the city of El Fasher, the center of North Darfur state, prompted about 600 people, mostly women and children, to flee their homes in the eastern and northern neighborhoods of the city.
Thousands of residents in various cities of the Darfur region, western Sudan, face very difficult humanitarian and economic conditions due to the armed confrontations taking place in the region between the army and the Rapid Support Forces, which forced many of them to flee their homes and flee or take refuge in safer areas.
The bloody confrontations between the army and the Rapid Support Forces in the city of El Fasher, the center of North Darfur state, prompted about 600 people, mostly women and children, to flee their homes in the eastern and northern neighborhoods of the city, and settled in some schools and health facilities in the southern neighborhoods.
Since last April 15, fierce fighting has been taking place between the army, led by Lieutenant General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the Rapid Support Forces, led by Muhammad Hamdan Dagalo (Hamidati), in the capital, Khartoum, and has spread to several states in the country, especially the Darfur region with its five states, during which hundreds were killed and displaced. Hundreds of thousands of people internally, and tens of thousands of them have sought refuge in neighboring countries.
Flee under a hail of bullets
Adam Jumaa, one of those who fled the confrontations in El Fasher, the largest city in the region, says: "At first we thought that the fighting would not come close to our neighborhood, but after the passage of time, a barrage of bullets and bombs rained down on us."
He stated that "the conflict in the city has displaced no less than 600 people, most of whom have difficulty securing housing, as they do not have savings, and they are spread out in schools and health facilities in El Fasher, the oldest city in Darfur historically."
El Fasher was the last capital of the Fur Sultanate, before it fell to the British occupation in 1916, during World War I. The palace of Ali Dinar, the last Fur sultan (1856-1916) is still a witness to that era, as the Turkish Agency for Cooperation and Coordination (TİKA) undertook its restoration. Since 2016, it was handed over to the Sudanese Museums and Antiquities Authority in the summer of 2021.
Urgent distress
The head of the Native Administration in the Darfur region, Salah al-Din Muhammad al-Fadl, appealed to local and international humanitarian organizations to send urgent aid to the newly displaced people in Darfur.
"Those fleeing are in need of urgent assistance from national organizations and international bodies, (and countries) that evacuated their nationals outside the country with the onset of the crisis," Fadl said.
He pointed out that among the displaced are "the elderly, orphans, women and widows who do not have the ability to purchase the necessary needs of food and medicine, and this requires providing them with urgent aid."
In the state of Central Darfur, of which Zalingei is the capital, the coordinator of the camps for the displaced, "Adam Rijal", says that "the region has been witnessing a complete outage of communications and electricity for more than ten days."
He explained that "no one can leave or leave Zalingei, which has become almost completely isolated from the outside world because of the armed clashes between the two parties."
Tens of thousands of civilians in Darfur sought refuge in Chad, and to a lesser extent in South Sudan and the Central African Republic, which borders the region from the west and south.
On May 24, the High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, said in a tweet that "more than 300,000 people have had to flee Sudan to neighboring countries, many of whom have crossed into Chad and Egypt over the past few days."
On May 17, the United Nations stated that “about 25 million people, representing more than half of the population of Sudan, need humanitarian assistance,” warning that “the situation in Sudan is rapidly turning into a regional crisis,” and expecting that “the number of refugees fleeing Sudan will reach one million.” this year".
To counter this, the United Nations declared "the need for $2.56 billion to provide aid to refugees due to the Sudanese crisis," noting that "220,000 Sudanese have become refugees in Egypt, Chad and South Sudan as a result of the fighting."