A drone attack has hit a convoy of 16 trucks carrying desperately needed food to Sudan‘s famine-hit North Darfur region, the United Nations said, as warring parties trade blame for the attack.
UN spokesperson Daniela Gross told reporters on Thursday that all drivers and personnel travelling with the World Food Programme (WFP) convoy were safe.
At least three of the trucks caught fire, according to a WFP statement quoted by the Reuters news agency. Gross said all trucks had caught fire, according to The Associated Press news agency.
It was not yet clear who was responsible for Wednesday’s attack, the second in the past three months to prevent a UN convoy from delivering to North Darfur.
The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) accused the Sudanese army of hitting the convoys as part of a drone attack on Mellit market and other areas. The army later said in a statement that this was a fabrication to distract from what it termed the RSF’s crimes.
In early June, a convoy from the WFP and the UN agency for children, UNICEF, was attacked while awaiting clearance to proceed to North Darfur’s besieged capital, el-Fasher, killing five people and injuring several others.
Edem Wosornu, of UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said some 70 trucks of supplies were waiting in the RSF-controlled city of Nyala to get to el-Fashir, but security guarantees were needed as humanitarian workers were coming under attack.
The attack came as several countries, including the United States, Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Egypt, voiced alarm at the worsening hunger situation in war-torn Sudan, calling for pauses in fighting to let in more aid.
The war in Sudan began in April 2023, when violence caused by long-simmering tensions between its military and the paramilitary RSF erupted in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur.
Some 40,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million displaced, UN agencies say. Nearly 25 million people are experiencing acute hunger.
The RSF and their allies announced in late June that they had formed a parallel government in areas they control, mainly in the vast Darfur region, where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated.
The RSF has encircled el-Fasher, where the UN says people are facing starvation. It is the only capital the paramilitary forces don’t hold in Darfur, which is comprised of five states.
An estimated 300,000 remaining residents in the city have been subjected to a long siege as fighting rages.
Last year, a famine was declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur. The risk of famine has since spread to 17 areas in Darfur and the Kordofan region, which is adjacent to North Darfur and west of Khartoum, according to the UN.
WFP spokesperson Gift Watanasathorn urged the warring parties to “respect international humanitarian law”. “Humanitarian staff and assets must never be a target,” Watanasathorn said.
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