CAIRO (AP) 鈥� All roads around Sudan鈥檚 in North Darfur are blocked and the security situation has become 鈥渦nbearable,鈥� an international aid worker told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name M茅decins Sans Fronti猫res, or MSF, has of a half-million people because of safety concerns caused by fighting between the Sudanese army and the rival paramilitary group Rapid Support Forces, or RSF.
鈥淭here is no more MSF activities since a couple of days now in Zamzam because the security was unbearable for our team," said Marion Ramstein, MSF鈥檚 project coordinator for North Darfur.
That leaves few organizations on the ground to help in the remote area, Ramstein said, calling it 鈥渁 heartbreaking decision. We know that we left the population with no other support."
plunged into civil war in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the military and the RSF. has killed at least 20,000 people, forced more than 14 million from their homes and created famine in some areas.
MSF has said two of its ambulances in December and January were shot at while carrying patients from Zamzam camp to the regional hub of El Fasher.
Ramstein said that in one shooting, a woman accompanying her sister was killed, prompting the group to suspend its ambulance movements between the camp and El Fasher in January.
MSF will return to Zamzam, but teams currently can鈥檛 work in a high-risk environment, Ramstein said.
Zamzam is in famine. A report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, an international collection of experts tracking hunger, found last year that the camp and some other parts of North Darfur known as IPC Phase 5.
Ramstein said MSF had received many cases of young children in Zamzam suffering from anemia. In September, during a vaccination campaign there and found that 34% had acute malnutrition.
Zamzam camp has seen displaced families arrive from the areas of Abu Zerega, Shagra, and Saluma. They have told MSF teams of abuses in villages and on roads in that include killings, sexual violence, looting and beatings.
The Associated Press
