KHARTOUM: Entire villages in Sudan’s West Darfur region have been burned to the ground by marauding militias. Aid agencies have warned that the entire region was on the brink of a “humanitarian catastrophe”.
According to the BBC, Widespread looting and the destruction of vital infrastructure have left several with little access to food, medicine and clean water.
A ceasefire between the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has led to a lull in the violence around Khartoum. But fighting has continued in Darfur, and as the tussle there enters its seventh week, the region appears to have plunged into chaos.
Those unable to flee the war have been digging ditches around their neighbourhoods and setting up barricades to keep out militia fighters who have been destroying everything in their path.
Satellite pictures obtained by the BBC confirm that a village near Nyala in South Darfur, Abu Adam, has been wiped out by fire – the blackened outline visible from space.
A local journalist, said he has been suffering from sporadic blackouts and speaking with citizens inside the city was difficult. Communications have been cut off, but local journalist Essa Daffallah said, “The RSF stormed the city with dozens of pickup trucks mounted with guns and a large number of motorbikes.” He said that on May 19 “, Non-Governmental Organisations’ offices and shops were looted”.
“The hospital was emptied because it was in the fighting area, and most pharmacies were looted. All the residential places in Nyala have been completely sealed off by barricades and digging ditches so the militias cannot enter the residential districts.”
This region was already struggling to assist hundreds of thousands of people displaced by other conflicts.
A local activist in Nyala said that more than 600,000 internally displaced citizens, who relied entirely on humanitarian assistance, have received no aid for 40 days because of the ongoing fighting.
Satellite pictures tell the tale of attacks on essential lifelines for civilians, like the major market, showing that some of it had been damaged by the fire. That’s a massive loss because Nyala supplies the region.
According to the BBC, people need help, and aid employees are frantically trying to access the region. They’ve gathered in nearby Chad with plans to cross the border into Darfur as soon as possible.
“We know it is a high level of risk,” said Justine Muzik Piquemal from the French NGO Solidarités International. “But we need to send humanitarian items as soon as we can. Because what we’re going to find, I think, would be dead bodies everywhere and no water. No latrines. And no food.”
