UN reveals besieged city goes without food assistance since beginning of the year
Port Sudan, Sudan (PANA)- The United Nations has reiterated that for nine months running, humanitarian and UN organisations are unable to deliver food or humanitarian assistance to the besieged city of Al Fahir in north Darfur state.
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs ( OCHA) on Wednesday issued an update saying that “conflict-related violence and attacks’’ on aid workers remain major constraints on humanitarian access in Sudan.
“In North Darfur, Al Fashir remains under siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Despite sustained high-level engagement, no agreement has been reached to allow humanitarian access, and no aid convoy has entered the city since the beginning of the year,” OCHA complained on Wednesday.
It pointed out that on 20 August, a humanitarian convoy offloading food supplies in Mellit, North Darfur, was struck by drone attacks, destroying three UN fleet trucks. This followed an earlier assault on 1 June, when a joint humanitarian convoy near Al-Koma, also in North Darfur, was attacked, leaving five aid workers dead and multiple aid trucks destroyed.
The UN OCHA added that on 16 August, a grenade explosion forced medical organisation, MSF, to suspend its operations in Zalingei Teaching Hospital, Central Darfur, amid a cholera outbreak.
The suspension, which lasted two weeks, came while the hospital was central to cholera outbreak response. On 30 August, an airstrike hit a clinic in Nyala, South Darfur, killing and injuring dozens of civilians and patients.
“Volunteers with mutual aid groups continue to face arbitrary arrest, detention and abuse. In August alone, incidents of violence against volunteer aid workers were reported in Khartoum, East Darfur and North Darfur,” it lamented.
It further explained that ongoing hostilities also complicated the movement of humanitarian convoys nationwide. Nevertheless, life-saving assistance recently reached Dilling and Kadugli in South Kordofan, the first significant convoy to access those towns in over a year.
The organisation complained that in Khartoum, where aid operations are scaling up in response to a cholera outbreak and the large return of internally displaced people, bureaucratic hurdles severely undermined humanitarian activities. Partners must obtain multiple travels, entry and exit permits at both federal and state levels, requiring stamps from several authorities.
“These procedures can take weeks, significantly delaying operations." it underlined, adding that another concern was the requirement for Humanitarian Aid Commission (HAC) state officials to accompany routine response activities.
“These costs are not foreseen in technical agreements and divert scarce resources away from vulnerable conflict-affected people. The Sudan Joint Operating Principles (JOPs), a set of common standards for principled and effective humanitarian action, underlined that humanitarian actors would refuse requests from those engaged in the conflict to use humanitarian assets.”
It complained that heavy rains had rendered the road between Nyala and East Darfur impassable, compounding access constraints in West Kordofan and other areas.
-0-PANA MO/RA 10Sept2025
