Activists and a local emergency council have appealed for help for families displaced by RSF attacks in Umbaru locality, while a displaced persons' body says crop failure is pushing thousands a day from South Darfur's Mershing to Tawila.
Activists launched an appeal on Saturday 7 November for hundreds of families displaced by attacks in Umbaru locality, North Darfur, Sudan Tribune reported. Early last week the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) attacked Mizbid, Arouri, Um Marahik and Abu Haraz, areas mainly inhabited by the Zaghawa, according to the report.
Local sources accused the RSF of ethnically targeted killings and arrests and of destroying a hospital in Mizbid and a water source in Arouri. CERHA has not been able to verify these accounts, and the RSF has not commented on them. The North Darfur Emergency Room Council said families who fled were sleeping in the open and sheltering under trees without blankets as temperatures fell, and called for safe corridors, shelter, food and health care. Umbaru remains under the control of the army and the allied Joint Force.
New arrivals in Tawila
Separately, the General Coordination of Displaced Persons and Refugees Camps said on Friday 6 November that crop failure, food shortages and insecurity were driving thousands of people a day from Mershing locality in South Darfur to Tawila in North Darfur, Sudan Tribune reported. Farmers in the area had harvested no sorghum or millet this season, the group said. "Families have become unable to provide for their basic needs, coinciding with rising prices and the deterioration of security conditions," it said, urging aid agencies to respond inside Mershing rather than waiting for families to reach other areas.
About 800,000 displaced people are sheltering across eight camps around Tawila, according to UN data cited by Sudan Tribune. The area is controlled by the Sudan Liberation Movement faction led by Abdel Wahid al-Nur, which is neutral in the war.
Child malnutrition rising
The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification estimates that 825,000 children under five will suffer severe acute malnutrition in Sudan in 2026, 7 per cent more than in 2025, Al Jazeera reported on 7 November. UNICEF and partners treated 174,700 children for severe acute malnutrition in the first half of the year. Below-average rainfall linked to El Niño has caused drought across roughly half the country, the outlet said.
Context
UNHCR and IOM said on 6 November that 15.4 million people in Sudan need emergency shelter and household items but that funding allows them to prioritise only about one in ten. Darfur is divided between areas held by the RSF-led Tasis administration, which has appealed to the UN for drought assistance, and pockets held by the army and its allies.
Image: Children in Darfur, Sudan, 2018. Chansey, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.