GENEVA: Thousands of children are facing an imminent risk of death as malnutrition rates skyrocket in the besieged city of al-Fashir in Sudan's Darfur region, four United Nations agencies said on Thursday.
More than a quarter of a million civilians, about half of them children, have been cut off from food and healthcare in the city during a 16-month-old standoff, the agencies said.
"Health facilities have collapsed, and thousands of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition are now without treatment," the agencies said.
Famine-stricken al-Fashir is the Sudanese army's last holdout in the vast, western region as it battles the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in a civil war that began in April 2023.
The International Organization for Migration (IOM), refugee agency UNHCR, children's organisation UNICEF and the World Food Programme said their representatives had seen widespread devastation in Darfur and other parts of the country during visits.
Malnutrition rates were also soaring across the country as a whole, the agencies said.
"Famine was confirmed in parts of Sudan last year and the hunger situation remains catastrophic, with children among the hardest hit," the agencies said.
People who returned to the capital this year after the army retook Khartoum found devastated neighbourhoods.
"I met people coming back to a city still scarred by conflict, where homes are damaged and basic services are barely functioning," said Ugochi Daniels, IOM's Deputy Director General for Operations.
In all, more than 30 million people, including nearly 15 million children, were in dire need of aid, the agencies said.
Only a quarter of the $4.2 billion asked for in the 2025 U.N. Sudan Humanitarian Response Plan has been funded so far, they added.
Thousands of children at risk of death in Sudan's besieged al-Fashir, UN says
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Thousands of children at risk of death in Sudan's besieged al-Fashir, UN says
- "Health facilities have collapsed, and thousands of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition are now without treatment," agencies said
- IOM, UNHCR, UNICEF and WFP said their representatives had seen widespread devastation in Darfur
Vessel struck off Oman’s Muscat, UKMTO says
DUBAI: A vessel was struck on Sunday by an unknown projectile 50 nautical miles north of Oman’s capital, Muscat, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said.
The attack resulted in a fire in the vessel’s engine room that has been brought under control, UKMTO added.
It is the second incident the agency reports on Sunday after reporting an incident off Oman’s Kumzar in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian state television said Sunday that an oil tanker was sinking after it was struck while attempting to pass through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
The incident took place as Iran exchanged strikes with the United States and Israel, who launched an attack Saturday that killed the Islamic republic’s supreme leader.
“The fate of the offending oil tanker that was struck while attempting to illegally pass through the Strait of Hormuz is that it is now sinking,” state TV reported, without elaborating.
It carried footage showing heavy black smoke emanating from the burning tanker at sea.
The strait carries a quarter of the world’s seaborne oil and a fifth of all liquified natural gas.
On Saturday, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards had warned that the vital waterway was unsafe due to US and Israeli attacks and was therefore closed to ships.
