Despite talk of a cease-fire, the conflict has intensified. Last month, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths said more than 500,000 people were forced to flee their homes in Jazeera province that had become a safe haven for civilians after the RSF attacked and took its capital, Wad Medani.
CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — Sudanese paramilitary leader Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo said Thursday he was committed to a cease-fire to end
The U.S. State Department has said that both the RSF and the Sudanese military have committed war crimes or crimes against humanity during the nine-month conflict.
Griffiths, the U.N. undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, said in a statement Thursday that “the same horrific abuses that have defined this war in other hotspots — Khartoum, Darfur and Kordofan — are now being reported in Wad Medani.
“Given Wad Medani’s significance as a hub for relief operations, the fighting there — and looting of humanitarian warehouses and supplies — is a body blow to our efforts to deliver food, water, health care and other critical aid,” he said.
Griffiths said nearly 25 million people across Sudan will need humanitarian assistance in 2024 “but the bleak reality is that intensifying hostilities are putting most of them beyond our reach.”
Deliveries from Chad to Darfur continue, but efforts to get aid elsewhere are increasingly under threat, he said, and “deliveries across conflict lines have ground to a halt.”
Griffiths said the international community, especially those with influence on the parties, “must take decisive and immediate action to stop the fighting.”