Thousands of Sudanese are flocking to Chad as the United Nations calls for access to western Sudan to provide much-needed aid amid the humanitarian crisis.
Thousands continue to pour into Chad to flee escalating violence in Sudan’s West Darfur state, as a UN official seeks to deliver emergency medical supplies to the war-torn region amid a worsening humanitarian crisis , food aid and other assistance.
“Darfur is an area we cannot enter, where there is heavy fighting [there]” UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sudan Clementine Nqueta-Salami told Al Jazeera on Saturday.
“We need to be able to bring in staff. We need to be able to make deals so we can move down the line [and] Our trucks currently in parts of the country can go to Darfur,” she said, calling for a security agreement for the safe delivery of aid.
Adam Mohd Yousef lost 22 members of his family, 15 of them children, in the two months following the siege of the city of El Geneina in Darfur.
“The Sudanese government is not helping us. They see what is happening and just watch us burn,” he told Al Jazeera through tears.
Yusuf is among thousands of Sudanese refugees who have crossed into Chad, Darfur, according to humanitarian groups and international actors amid the ongoing fighting between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The situation in Seoul is particularly catastrophic.
Zein Basravi, an Al Jazeera correspondent from the city of Chad, said: “UNHCR is assessing the situation and they say that in the last two months of war, the situation has never been this bad, certainly not at this border checkpoint in Adré. “On the border with Sudan.
Basravi said UNCHR said the international community did not have enough interest in the crisis and that they were underfunded.
At least 1,000 people were killed in el-Geneina, amid fresh attacks by Arab nomadic tribes linked to the RSF. The fighting also sent more than 270,000 refugees across the border to Chad.
Refugees at the Ardele checkpoint told Al Jazeera that their city of El Geneina no longer exists as thousands of people arrive at the crossing every day, tired, hopeless and worried about their lives and their future feel scared. Many border crossers are also unaccompanied children who are picked up by strangers along the way.
“I didn’t know where my children were. I had to leave them behind,” a sobbing woman told Al Jazeera before collapsing from exhaustion.
While UN agencies such as the World Food Program (WFP) were able to receive aid in other fighting strongholds, such as the capital Khartoum, they were unable to provide relief in Darfur.
On Thursday, the United States and the United Nations said the situation there could herald a repeat of past mass atrocities.
The U.S. State Department said in a statement that events in the region were “an ominous reminder of the horrific events that led to the U.S. determination of genocide in Darfur in 2004.”
“Darfur is rapidly descending into a humanitarian catastrophe. The world will not allow this to happen. It will not happen again,” UN aid chief Martin Griffiths also said in a statement.
The killing of West Darfur Governor Khamis Abakar on Wednesday after he publicly blamed the Rapid Support Forces for civilian deaths marked a new escalation in the conflict.
