CAIRO (AP) — Famine has spread to two regions of war-torn Sudan, including a major city in Darfur where paramilitary fighters have been rampaging the past week, a global hunger monitoring group said Monday, marking the latest crisis in a war that has created the world’s largest humanitarian disaster.
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said famine has been detected in the Darfur city of el-Fasher and the city of Kadugli in South Kordofan province. Twenty other areas in Darfur and Kordofan, where fighting intensified in recent months, are also at risk of famine, according to the IPC report.
El-Fasher had been under siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces for 18 months, cutting off much of the food and other supplies to tens of thousands of people inside. Last week, RSF fighters seized the city, reportedly unleashing a wave of killings and attacks on its population that killed hundreds, though the scope of the violence is still unclear, with communications to the region poor.
Kadugli, as well, has been under RSF siege for months with tens of thousands of people trapped inside, as the paramilitary group tries to seize further territory from its rival, the Sudanese military.
Sudan has been torn apart since April 2023 by the fight for power between the military and RSF. More than 40,000 people have been killed, according to U.N. figures, but aid groups say that is an undercount and the true number could be many times higher. The war has driven more than 14 million people from their home, fueled disease outbreaks and pushed parts of the country into famine.
In its latest report, the second in less than a year, the IPC said famine – or IPC Phase 5 -- has been announced in el-Fasher and Kadugli, which it said experienced “a total collapse of livelihoods, starvation, extremely high levels of malnutrition, and death.” The IPC is considered the leading international authority on hunger crises.
In total, about 375,000 people have been pushed into famine in Darfur and Kordofan as of September, the report said. Another 6.3 million people across the country are in IPC Phase 4, meaning they face extreme levels of hunger, it said.
Save the Children said in September that food supplies had run out in Kadugli, where it said fighting had escalated. It said tens of thousands have been driven from their homes, many fleeing to other parts of the city because of roadblocks blocking escape.
AP correspondent Sam Mednick in Rome contributed to this report.