Displaced short of food, water in Darfur’s Nierteti and Kassab

People in camps for the displaced in Nierteti, Central Darfur, have run short of food and medicines, local leaders reported. Kassab camp in North Darfur suffers from a drinking water shortage.

Thousands of displaced people who have fled the fighting between the Sudanese army, militias and rebel movements in Jebel Marra in 2016, to Nierteti are facing “an acute shortage of food, shelter and medicines”. A tribal Sheikh told Radio Dabanga that 21,000 people fled to Nierteti camps in the beginning of 2016.

“They have received food aid only once in 2017,” he claimed. The Humanitarian Aid Commission has made an inventory of their number. “But these newly displaced people are lacking health services, medicines and food.”

North Darfur

In Kassab camp in Kutum locality, a number of water pumps are out of operation, resulting in difficult access to drinking water for the residents of the camp. Reportedly 21 out of 27 pumps are not working, and the main tank has been unable to provide water for two weeks in a row, according to a Sheikh in Kassab.

The dry weather of summer approaches, the Sheikh stressed. “The people, totalling 38,000, are in a very difficult situation in accessing drinking water.” He hoped that humanitarian organisations can intervene to resolve the technical issue.

This week residents of Kassab reported that local health services and medicine supply has deteriorated. A camp coordinator said that the displaced people and residents of neighbouring villages have to rely on the only health centre and few medical workers in Kassab.