Sudan clears path for 17,500 tons of food aid as war rages
Some of the aid has reached the Zamzam camp in Darfur, where famine has been confirmed, while the opening of a key border crossing was extended earlier this month.
Trucks carrying food for an intended 1.5 million people are en route to Sudan’s most food-insecure areas, the World Food Programme said on Tuesday, following warnings of the dire situation in the country and measures to improve aid access.
WFP spokesperson for Sudan Leni Kinzli told reporters in Geneva Tuesday that the body had received clearances from the Sudanese government for the massive delivery. Kinzli said the trucks will be clearly labelled and urged all parties to the conflict to allow them to pass safely, according to reports.
The UN organization announced on Friday that 700 trucks carrying 17,500 tons of food assistance, enough to feed 1.5 million people for one month, were en route to various parts of the country. The destinations include 14 “hotspots” that are hard to reach and suffer from food insecurity. The first convoy arrived in western Sudan’s Zamzam camp, where famine conditions have been confirmed, on Friday. The second convoy departed Port Sudan on the Red Sea for Zamzam on Nov. 12, while a third left the port for South Kordofan province near the border with South Sudan the same day, the WFP said in a statement.
The Sudanese civil war began in April of 2023 when fighting broke out between the Rapid Support Forces, a rebel group led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, and the Sudanese armed forces, headed by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan. The country has been mired in political instability since the 2019 ouster of longtime ruler Omar Bashir, who is currently imprisoned. The RSF emerged from the Janjaweed militia that fought for Bashir in the war in Darfur in the early 2000s.
