GENEVA: More than 700 trucks are on their way to famine-stricken areas of Sudan as part of a major scale-up after clearance came through from the Sudanese government, a World Food Programme spokesperson said on Tuesday.
The army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in conflict since April 2023 that has caused acute hunger and disease across the country. Both sides are accused of impeding aid deliveries, the RSF by looting and the army by bureaucratic delays.
“In total, the trucks will carry about 17,500 tons of food assistance, enough to feed 1.5 million people for one month,” WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinzli told a press briefing in Geneva.
“We’ve received around 700 clearances from the government in Sudan, from the Humanitarian Aid Commission, to start to move and transport assistance to some of these hard-to-reach areas,” she added, saying the start of the dry season was another factor enabling the scale-up.
The WFP fleet will be clearly labelled in the hope that access will be facilitated, she said.
Some of the food is intended for 14 areas of the country that face famine or are at risk of famine, including Zamzam camp in the Darfur region.
The first food arrived there on Friday prompting cheers from crowds of people who had resorted to eating crushed peanut shells normally fed to animals, Kinzli said.
A second convoy for the camp is currently about 300 km (186 miles) away, she said.
On Monday, the head of Sudan’s sovereign council, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, said he would allow the airports in El Obeid, Kadugli, and Damazine — army-controlled areas isolated by the fighting — to serve as humanitarian hubs for UN agencies to facilitate deliveries.
Major food aid ‘scale-up’ underway to famine-hit Sudan, WFP says
https://arab.news/9cfbh
Major food aid ‘scale-up’ underway to famine-hit Sudan, WFP says
- “In total, the trucks will carry about 17,500 tons of food assistance, enough to feed 1.5 million people for one month,” said WFP Sudan spokesperson Leni Kinzli
- The WFP fleet will be clearly labelled in the hope that access will be facilitated
Famed Jerusalem stone still sells despite economic woes
- Quarries account for 4.5% of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers
- Palestinian Authority, which exercises partial civilian control over some of the West Bank, is on the brink of bankruptcy
SAIR, West Bank: Despite the catastrophic state of the Palestinian economy, Faraj Al-Atrash, operator of a quarry in the occupied West Bank, proudly points to an armada of machines busy eating away at sheer walls of dusty white rock that stretch into the distance.
“This here is considered the main source of revenue for the entire region,” Atrash said at the site near the town of Beit Fajjar, close to the city of Hebron.
The quarry is a source of Jerusalem stone, the famed pale rock used throughout the Holy Land and beyond for millennia and which gives much of the region its distinctive architectural look. But Atrash, in his fifties, said “our livelihood is constantly under threat.”
“Lately, I feel like the occupation (Israel) has begun to fight us on the economic front,” he said.
Atrash fears the confiscation of the quarry’s industrial equipment, the expansion of Israeli settlements and the Palestinian financial crisis.
The Palestinian territories are “currently going through the most severe economic crisis ever recorded,” according to a UN report.
“There are problems with exports and market access because we used to export most of the stone to Israel, and after the Gaza war begun, we ran into difficulties,” explained Ibrahim Jaradat, whose family has owned a quarry for more than 40 years near Sair, also near Hebron.
Public services are functioning worse than ever, Atrash said, adding that fixed costs such as water and electricity had soared.
Quarries account for 4.5 percent of Palestinian GDP and employ nearly 20,000 workers, according to the Hebron Chamber of Commerce.
Around 65 percent of exports are destined for the Israeli market, where some municipalities mandate the use of Jerusalem stone. “The people who buy the stones from us to resell them to construction sites are mostly Israelis,” said Abu Walid Riyad Gaith, a 65-year-old quarry operator. He lamented a lack of solidarity from Arab countries, which he said do not buy enough of the rock.
Most of the roughly 300 quarries in the West Bank are located in Area C, land which falls under full Israeli authority and covers the vast majority of its settlements.
“Many (Israeli) settlers pass through here, and if Israel annexes Palestine, it will start with these areas,” said one operator.
The physical demands of working in a quarry are intense, but for many Palestinians there are few other options as the West Bank’s economy wilts.
“We are working ourselves to death,” Atrash said, pointing to his ten laborers moving back and forth in monumental pits where clouds of dust coat them in a white film.
In the neighboring quarry, blinking and coughing as he struggled with the intense work was a former geography teacher.
With the Palestinian Authority’s budget crisis meaning he was no longer receiving his salary, he had looked for work in the only local place still hiring.
All the laborers said they suffered from back, eye and throat problems. “We call it white gold,” said Laith Derriyeh, employed by a stonemason, “because it normally brings in substantial amounts of money. But today everything is complicated; it’s very difficult to think about the future.”
He added: “People have no money, and those who do are afraid to build,” he added.
