Sudan

About 70 people have been killed in an attack on the only functional hospital in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan, the head of the World Health Organization has said, the latest in a series of attacks as the African nation’s civil war has escalated in recent days.

The disastrous conflict in Sudan is pushing the country deeper into chaos. Work to halt it has never been more urgent. To get talks going, mediators may need to present a notional picture of what the post-war dispensation could look like.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk warned on Friday that Sudanese civilians were in greater peril than ever as ethnically motivated attacks and hate speech by the warring parties becomes “increasingly common.”

[…] The recapture of the city of Wad Medani, the capital of Gezira state, came more than a year after it fell to the RSF. … In recent months, the RSF has suffered multiple battlefield blows, giving the military the upper hand in the war.

The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden has imposed sanctions on the leaders of Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Tuesday that RSF members and allied militias "have committed genocide" in Sudan. The paramilitary group has been locked in a brutal war with the Sudanese military, once its ally, since April 2023.

Human suffering in Sudan has reached devastating levels, with over 11.5 million people internally displaced and 3.2 million seeking refuge in neighbouring countries. … “Famine conditions are now present in five areas,” Ms. Wosornu [OCHA] stated, highlighting Zamzam, Al Salam, and Abu Shouk camps for the internally-displaced, as well as the western Nuba Mountains. 

The United States accused Russia at the United Nations on Monday of funding the two warring parties in Sudan, an apparent step up from Washington's previous assertion that Moscow was playing both sides of the conflict to advance its political objectives.

Interview with Ramtane Lamamra, the UN Secretary-General’s Personal Envoy For Sudan.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review, which UN agencies use, said last week that the war between Sudan's army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces had created famine conditions for 638,000 people, with a further 8.1 million on the brink of mass starvation.

Aid trucks carrying food and medical supplies reached the Jebel Awliya area in Sudan this week for the first time since the country's civil war began in 2023, local volunteers said. The area, south of the capital Khartoum, is one of many in Sudan facing mass starvation as warring parties have cut off access.