TAWILA: Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan’s war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge — the only food her family have had for days.
“No organization has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Idris told AFP, her voice brittle with fatigue.
Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.
“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometer (37-mile) desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.
The few aid organizations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.
“Humanitarian organizations were simply not prepared to receive this scale of displacement,” said Thibault Fendler, who works with medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) in Tawila.
Since war broke out in April 2023 between Sudan’s army and rival paramilitaries, the town has received waves of displaced people fleeing violence elsewhere.
“We are working to scale up our capacities, but the needs are simply enormous,” Fendler told AFP.
Tawila, nestled between mountains and seasonal farmland, was once a quiet rural outpost.
But the two-year war pitting the army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has buffeted the already-scarred Darfur region.
Entire displacement camps have been besieged and razed, while the armed group that controls the area around Tawila — a faction of the Sudan Liberation Movement, led by Abdelwahid Al-Nur — has vowed to protect those fleeing the violence.
The town’s schools, mosques and markets are crammed with people sleeping side by side, on concrete floors, under trees or in huts of straw and plastic, exposed to temperatures that can reach 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).
Beyond the town center, a patchwork of makeshift shelters fans out across the horizon.
Inside, families keep what little they managed to bring with them: worn bags, cooking pots or clothes folded carefully on mats laid over dry earth.
Some weary children play silently in the dirt — many malnourished, some dressed in oversized hand-me-downs, others in the clothes they had fled in.
Nearby, dozens of women line up with empty jerrycans, waiting by a lone water tank.
More queues snake around soup kitchens, with women carrying pots in hand and children on their hips, hoping to get a meal before they run out.
“When we arrived, the thirst had nearly killed us, we had nothing,” said Hawaa Hassan Mohamed, a mother who fled from North Darfur’s besieged state capital of El-Fasher.
“People shared what little they had,” she told AFP.
The war has created the world’s largest hunger crisis, with famine already declared in several parts of North Darfur state where the UN estimates that more than a million people are on the brink of starvation.
The RSF and the army continue to battle for control of territory, particularly in and around El-Fasher — the last army stronghold in Darfur — crippling humanitarian access.
“It takes a long time to get aid here. The roads are full of checkpoints. Some are completely cut off,” Noah Taylor, head of operations for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told AFP from Tawila.
“There are so many gaps in every sector, from food to shelter to sanitation. The financial and in-kind resources we have are simply not sufficient,” he said.
Organizations are scrambling to get food, clean water and health assistance to desperate families, but Taylor said these efforts are just scratching the surface.
“We are not there yet in terms of what people need,” he said.
“We’re doing what we can, but the global response has not kept pace with the scale of this disaster.”
Leni Kinzli, head of communications at the World Food Programme, said that a one-time delivery of “1,600 metric tons of food and nutrition supplies” for 335,000 people had reached Tawila last month.
But it took two weeks to reach the town, navigating multiple checkpoints and unsafe roads, she told AFP.
Aid workers warn that without urgent funding and secure access, these deliveries will even be harder, especially with the rainy season approaching.
‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town
https://arab.news/rq6jv
‘Barefoot with nothing’: War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town
Palestinians wait at border between Gaza and Egypt as uncertainty clouds reopening of Rafah crossing
Palestinians wait at border between Gaza and Egypt as uncertainty clouds reopening of Rafah crossing
- At that pace, long waits are facing most of the roughly 20,000 sick and wounded people who Gaza’s Health Ministry has said need treatment abroad
- Reopening the crossing is considered key as the ceasefire agreement moves into a complicated second phase
- The bus with about 40 Palestinians that entered Gaza via Rafah on Tuesday arrived at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis early Wednesday morning, where their families welcomed them after spending the entire day waiting
KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip: Palestinians gathered on both sides of Gaza’s border with Egypt on Tuesday hoping to pass through the Rafah crossing, after its reopening the previous day was marred by delays, interrogations and uncertainty over who would be allowed to cross.
On the Egyptian side were Palestinians who fled Gaza earlier in the Israel-Hamas war to seek medical treatment, according to Egypt’s state-run Al-Qahera News television. On the Gaza side, Palestinians in need of medical care that is unavailable in Gaza gathered at a hospital before ambulances moved toward Rafah, hoping for word that they would be allowed to cross the other way.
The office of the North Sinai governor confirmed Tuesday that an unknown number of patients and their companions had crossed from Gaza into Egypt.
The bus with about 40 Palestinians that entered Gaza via Rafah on Tuesday arrived at Nasser hospital in Khan Younis early Wednesday morning, where their families welcomed them after spending the entire day waiting.
Though hailed as a step forward for the fragile ceasefire struck in October, it took more than 10 hours for only about a dozen returnees and a small group of medical evacuees to cross in each direction on the first day Rafah reopened.
Three women who crossed into Gaza on Monday told The Associated Press on Tuesday that Israeli troops blindfolded and handcuffed them, then interrogated and threatened them, holding them for several hours before they were released.
The numbers permitted to cross on Monday fell well short of the 50 people that officials had said would be allowed each way and barely began to address the needs of tens of thousands of Palestinians who are hoping to be evacuated for treatment or to return home.
The import of humanitarian aid or goods through Rafah remains prohibited.
’Not a solution to the crisis’
Evacuation efforts on Tuesday morning converged around a Red Crescent hospital in Khan Younis, where a World Health Organization team arrived and a vehicle carrying patients and their relatives rolled in from another hospital. Then the group of WHO vehicles and Palestinian ambulances headed toward Rafah to await crossing.
As the sick, wounded and displaced waited to cross in both directions, health officials said the small number allowed to exit so far paled beside Gaza’s tremendous needs. Two years of fighting destroyed much of its medical infrastructure and left hospitals struggling to treat trauma injuries, amputations and chronic conditions like cancer.
In Gaza City, Shifa Hospital director Mohamed Abu Selmiya called the pace “crisis management, not a solution to the crisis,” imploring Israel to permit the importing of medical supplies and equipment. He wrote on Facebook: “Denying the evacuation of patients and preventing the entry of medicines is a death sentence for them.”
UN and WHO officials said the trickle of patients allowed out and restrictions on bringing in desperately needed supplies are prolonging a disastrous situation in Gaza.
“Rafah must function as a real humanitarian corridor so we can have a surge in aid deliveries,” said Tom Fletcher, the UN’s top relief official.
Palestinian Red Crescent spokesperson Raed Al-Nims told AP that only 16 patients with chronic conditions or war wounds, accompanied by 40 relatives, were brought from Khan Younis to the Gaza side of Rafah on Tuesday — less than the 45 patients and wounded the Red Crescent was told would be allowed.
After days of anticipation over the reopening, hope lingered that it might mark a meaningful first step. In Khan Younis, Iman Rashwan waited for hours until her mother and sister returned from Egypt, hoping others would soon see their loved ones again.
Waiting on both sides
Officials say the number of crossings could gradually increase if the system works, with Israel and Egypt vetting those allowed in and out. But security concerns and bureaucratic snags quickly tempered expectations raised by officials who for weeks had cast reopening as a major step in the ceasefire deal.
There were delays on Monday over disagreements about luggage allowances. Returnees were carrying more than anticipated with them, requiring additional negotiations, a person familiar with the situation told the AP, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the diplomatic matter.
“They didn’t let us cross with anything,” Rotana Al-Regeb said as she returned around midnight Monday to Khan Younis. “They emptied everything before letting us through. We were only allowed to take the clothes on our backs and one bag per person.”
The initial number of Palestinians allowed to cross is mostly symbolic. Israeli and Egyptian officials have said that 50 medical evacuees would depart — along with two caregiver escorts — and 50 Palestinians who left during the war would return.
At that pace, long waits are facing most of the roughly 20,000 sick and wounded people who Gaza’s Health Ministry has said need treatment abroad. About 150 hospitals across Egypt are ready to receive patients, authorities said.
Who and what would be allowed through Rafah was a central concern for both Israel and Egypt.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that anyone who wants to leave will eventually be permitted to do so, but Egypt has repeatedly said the Rafah crossing must open in both directions, fearing Israel could use it to push Palestinians out of Gaza.
Reopening the crossing is considered key as the ceasefire agreement moves into a complicated second phase. That calls for installing a new Palestinian committee to govern Gaza, deploying an international security force, disarming Hamas and taking steps to begin rebuilding.
In a meeting Tuesday with US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Jerusalem, Netayanhu repeated Israel’s “uncompromising demand” that Hamas be disarmed before any reconstruction begins, the prime minister’s office said.
A 19-year-old killed in southern Gaza
Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis said Ahmed Abdel-Al, 19, was shot and killed by Israeli troops on Tuesday morning in a part of the southern Gaza City, some distance away from the area under the Israeli military’s control.
Israel’s military said it was not immediately aware of any shootings in the area.
Abdel-Al was the latest of the 529 Palestinians killed by Israeli fire since the Oct. 10 start of the ceasefire, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. They are among more than 71,800 Palestinians killed since the start of the war, according to the ministry, which does not distinguish between fighters and civilians.
The ministry, part of Gaza’s Hamas-led government, keeps detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
