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Anadolu Agency reported on Thursday that the International Organization for Migration (IOM) estimates 5,035 people fled three villages in Sudan’s North Darfur state on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that most of the families crossed into neighbouring Chad. (Anadolu Agency)
According to Anadolu, the UN agency’s displacement tracking teams made the estimate for villages in Um Baru locality, and the agency said the movement followed an earlier incident reported on 6 November. It described conditions as “tense and highly volatile”. The report gives no figure for how many people reached Chad.
In a separate statement, IOM estimated that 240 people left camps in the Mershing area of South Darfur between Monday and Wednesday because of worsening insecurity. Most families headed for Tawila, a town in North Darfur. Earlier IOM figures for the region may overlap with these estimates and should not be added to them.
The war between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began in April 2023.
The World Food Programme (WFP), the main UN food agency in Sudan, said on Thursday that it supported more than four million people in August, began cutting its caseload in September because of funding shortages, and now reaches just over three million. It said fighting and displacement are the main drivers of hunger, and that blocked and washed-out roads limit its deliveries. The release describes WFP’s national operation; it does not say whether the people who fled this week had been receiving food aid. (World Food Programme)
WFP said it urgently needs $520m to provide food and nutrition assistance to 5.4 million people through April 2027. “We cannot outfeed the war,” its executive director, Luke Lindberg, said.