UN Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths has traveled to Sudan in response to the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation. In Port Sudan today, Griffiths demanded security guarantees for aid transports from the conflicting parties. He said six trucks carrying food aid were recently looted en route to the western Darfur region.
The port city of Port Sudan is 850 kilometers from the capital Khartoum and has so far been spared from fighting. The senior UN official has been sent to Sudan on an urgent mission to explore ways to get aid to the millions who are unable to leave their country because of heavy fighting.
The delivery of the first relief supplies was slow. Sudan is one of the poorest countries in the world, every third inhabitant was dependent on humanitarian aid even before the fighting began.
According to the UN, the ongoing fighting since mid-April has forced hundreds of thousands of people to flee. A spokesman for the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said yesterday in Geneva that more than 330,000 people have fled within the country alone. Another 100,000 have fled to neighboring countries.
Fighting continued despite the ceasefire
Meanwhile, despite an agreed ceasefire, heavy fighting continued today. A witness told the AFP news agency about “explosions at the headquarters of the state television station”. A resident spoke of “fighter planes over the capital Khartoum”.
For more than two weeks, army units under the command of military ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan have been fighting the RSF militia led by General Mohammed Hamdan Daglo in the north-east African country. According to official figures, more than 500 people have already been killed in the fighting and 4,600 were injured.
According to the South Sudanese government, the conflicting parties yesterday agreed on a seven-day ceasefire from tomorrow. However, previous ceasefires had been repeatedly broken.
