Call for donation to meet the food needs of residents of the Khartoum suburbs

In the central district of Bahri, a suburb in the northern part of the Sudanese capital, a resistance committee has opened a donation drive to address the severe food shortages faced by residents trapped in their homes for the past four months due to the ongoing battles between the army and the Rapid Support Forces.

The Denagla Committee, representing one of the neighborhoods in Bahri, issued a statement on Saturday night on its Facebook page titled "Food Urgency." The statement highlighted the complex living conditions of the neighborhood's residents due to the war, power and water outages, and the absence of nearby stores.

The committee stated that work has been suspended for over three months, and households or individuals have depleted what remained of their strategic stockpiles.

According to their announcement, the committee has decided to open a donation platform to support each other by providing food supplies or contributing financially to purchase these supplies from the nearest location and distribute them among the residents.

The resistance committees are grassroots groups that organized protests to demand civilian rule after the military coup that ousted Omar al-Bashir's regime in 2019. They have been actively providing support since the conflict began three months ago.

The complaints of food scarcity extend to other neighborhoods and suburbs. In the Al-Mazzad neighborhood of Bahri, Abbas Mohammed Babiker, a resident, told Fras Press Agency that he has not left his home due to his mother's advanced age and illness. He revealed that they have been having only one meal per day for the past two months to preserve their dwindling supplies, and they now have only enough food for two more days, uncertain of what will happen after that.

Last week, Sudanese violinist Khalid Senhouri, a well-known musician, died, with his friends on social media reporting that he "died of hunger and was buried in front of his house in the Malazmeen neighborhood, central Omdurman," in the western suburbs of Greater Khartoum.

The battles, which erupted in mid-April between the army led by Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces led by Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, have primarily concentrated in the capital Khartoum, its suburbs, and the Darfur region in the west of the country.

The war has resulted in at least 3,900 deaths, according to the non-governmental organization ACLED, and has displaced more than three million people, whether internally or externally.

Sudan is one of the world's poorest countries, with over half of its population requiring assistance to survive. The famine warning has reached its highest level, and over two-thirds of hospitals are currently out of service.

On the other hand, humanitarian workers continue to face obstacles in reaching conflict areas, stating that authorities are preventing aid from reaching customs and not issuing entry visas for relief workers.



AFP