Sudanese dying of thirst and hunger in Omdurman

According to reports of Sudanese on social media, the extremely dire humanitarian situation in the central and southern parts of Omdurman has led to people starving to death in the past weeks. The neighbourhood committees of El Abbasiya are urging relief organisations to provide aid as soon as possible. The deteriorating security situation in the country has led to the stoppage of lorries travelling to Darfur.

The Abbasiyah neighbourhood committees yesterday called on humanitarian aid organisations “to urgently intervene and save the lives of people who are suffering from a complete blackout of water and electricity, a severe shortage of food and medicine, and a complete closure of hospitals and health centres for nearly six months” in El Abbasiya, El Fitihab, and Banat.

“Over the past days, the situation has become worse and more dangerous for the residents of El Abbasiya and the adjacent neighbourhoods,” the ‘El Abbasiya Tigers’ said in a statement on Facebook yesterday.

The volunteers active in El Abbasiya mention “continuoud fierce fighting” between the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in El Abbasiya and its surroundings, while “the RSF paramilitaries are still imposing their siege on these neighbourhoods”.

They explain that water has been cut off since the beginning of the war, in mid-April last year. Electricity has been cut off for nearly six months. Communications networks are not available, nor are there hospitals or health centres operating anymore.

People living in Banat, Al Arda, and El Morada daily sneak into El Abbasiya to fetch water from the only well in the area, the activists say.

RSF soldiers have closed El Abbasiya’s Abdeen market and took the merchandise to a market in El Arda, “where they are the ones supervising the sales. “A kilogramme of flour is sold for SDG10,000, a kilogramme of sugar SDG7,000, and a kilogramme of meat SDG15,000*. These goods, however, have not been available for weeks, so people resorted to eating onion sauce,” the statement reads.

“If we write to you about what is happening, by God, you will cry blood.”

The El Abbasiya grassroots committees “have tried repeatedly to communicate with organisations to enter the neighbourhood and try to save what can be saved, but there was no response”.

Difficult to flee

In a separate report yesterday, the El Abbasiya youth said that the RSF are hindering people who want to leave the area.

The RSF “changed the exit route” for people who want to flee the area. People now have to take the exit route through the El Fitihab neighbourhood, “so people have to walk very long distances and are prone to violence they encounter at the RSF checkpoints. A lot of young people were detained”.

Seven families who wanted to leave to safer areas were prevented by RSF soldiers from doing so and had to return to their homes.

Starving

Various short posts on X (formerly Twitter) confirm the extremely dire humanitarian situation in the area.

On Wednesday, Abo Mohamed called for urgent assistance from El Fitihab. “Help us, brothers, as people are starving to death. We only now found a place where we could charge our telephones. There is no water nor electricity. We do not ask much. Only that you explain our situation [to the world]. Daily two or three people are dying from hunger.”

“The janjaweed militia under the name of RSF resorted to starvation and cutting off water from several residential neighbourhoods in Omdurman, west of the capital Khartoum,” former correspondent @HatimElmadani said on Friday. “Residents have launched an urgent distress call after hunger and thirst killed many.”

Mudather (@Onlyxlavix) stated that the siege of El Fitihab may be the most violated geographical location currently in the war. People are dying of hunger. Neighbours are losing each other every hour, as many seem to have disappeared but after a while, they find them starved to death in their house from hunger”.

In November, Radio Dabanga reported about the RSF besieging Banat and El Fitihab neighbourhoods in Omdurman for weeks. The residents were already in dire need of water and food and the paramilitaries did not allow traders to enter the neighbourhoods.

Darfur

The people in Darfur are witnessing another significant increase in the prices of goods and services, as lorries have great difficulty reaching the western region from markets in eastern, northern, and central Sudan.

“This is due to the deterioration of the security situation,” a trader told Radio Dabanga from Nyala, capital of South Darfur. “Many roads have become too dangerous because of the continuing battles between the army and the RSF on several axes. This prompted many truck owners and merchants to stop sending goods to the markets in the West.”

A civil servant reported form Nyala that “living conditions have become very difficult, not only because of the continued airstrikes by the Sudanese air force on RSF posts in the city but also because the prices of food continue to rise.

“The condition of the people here is beyond description,” he said, and called on the South Darfur authorities to pay the delayed salaries to the employees so that they can solve their problems and provide some necessities for their families”.

Radio Dabanga reported on Friday that Sudan tops the International Rescue Committee’s (IRC) 2024 Watchlist of countries likely to experience “further deterioration in humanitarian conditions”. IRC referred to a report of the Geneva-based Assessment Capacities Project (ACAPS) that called the humanitarian situation in Sudan “extreme”.

In December, Central Darfur Muslim cleric and social activist Matar Younis has launched “an urgent humanitarian appeal” to the international community to send aid to the displaced in Darfur “to avoid an imminent famine”.

The UN World Health Organisation warned that month that nearly 18 million people across Sudan are facing acute hunger – more than double the number at the same time a year ago.