Sudan

Emergency Relief Coordinator Tom Fletcher told the UN Security Council that South Sudan is at risk of slipping into ‘full-scale famine and collapse’ as fighting intensifies and the UN peacekeeping mission is cut back.

Many people resorting to eating leaves and animal feed to survive in North Darfur and South Kordofan states.

Millions of people in Sudan are surviving on just one meal a day, as the country’s food crisis deepens and threatens to spread, according to a report published by a group of nongovernmental organisations (NGOs).

“Sudan’s war between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, which enters its third year on Wednesday, has caused widespread hunger and displaced millions of people amid one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises,” a report by Action Against Hunger, CARE International, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, and the Norwegian Refugee Council said on Monday.

“Nearly three years of conflict, marked by violence, displacement and siege tactics, have systematically eroded Sudan’s food system – field by field, road by road, market by market – producing mass hunger,” it added.

The report highlighted that millions of families can only access one meal a day in the two states worst hit by the conflict – North Darfur and South Kordofan.

“Often, they miss meals for entire days,” the report said, adding that many people have resorted to eating leaves and animal feed to survive.

The NGOs said communal kitchens set up to collectively prepare and share meals are struggling to stretch the scarce food available as resources dwindle.

It added that the crisis is being compounded by a worsening economic crisis and climate change.

Government denies famine

In April 2023, a war erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), unleashing a wave of violence that has led to one of the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crises, with more than 12 million forced from their homes, and more than 33 million people in need of humanitarian aid.

More than 40,000 people have been killed over the past three years, according to the United Nations. Aid groups say the actual death toll could be many times higher.

Some 61.7 percent of Sudan’s population – 28.9 million people – is facing acute food shortages, according to the 2026 Humanitarian Needs and Response Plan.

The army-aligned Sudanese government denies the existence of famine, while the RSF denies responsibility for such conditions in areas under its control.

The UN has reported widespread atrocities and waves of ethnically charged violence. In November, the global hunger monitor confirmed, for the first time, famine conditions in el-Fasher and Kadugli.

In February, the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification found that famine thresholds for acute malnutrition have been surpassed in Um Baru, where the rate of acutely malnourished children aged below five years was nearly double the famine threshold, and Kernoi.

The report, based on interviews with farmers, traders, and humanitarian actors in Sudan, details how the war in Sudan is driving communities towards famine conditions – due to disruptions to farming as well as the use of starvation as a weapon of war – including deliberate destruction of farms and markets.

Women and girls have been disproportionately affected, as they face a high risk of rape and harassment when going to the fields, visiting markets, or collecting water, the report said.

Female-headed households are three times more likely to experience food shortages than male-headed households, it added.

In a new report, Doctors Without Borders says sexual violence is the ‘defining feature’ of the conflict in Sudan.

Hanaan was 18 years old when she was raped by members of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group accused of committing widespread “war crimes” during nearly three years of fighting against Sudan’s army.

She was walking alongside a female friend to her makeshift home in an encampment for displaced people in South Darfur, when four men on motorbikes stopped them and asked where they were going.

“Two took each girl, and they raped us,” she told Doctors Without Borders, an international medical NGO known by its French initials MSF.

“I feel uncomfortable in my body, heavy. I don’t feel pain, apart from in my back – because they beat me, they beat me with their guns on my back,” she said.

Hanaan – not her real name – shared her testimony as part of a report released by MSF on Tuesday, which details the widespread use of sexual violence as a weapon in Sudan’s ongoing brutal civil war.

The NGO said 3,396 survivors of sexual violence sought treatment in MSF-supported health facilities across North and South Darfur between January 2024 and November 2025.

The data, presented in the report titled, There is Something I Want to Tell You…, was drawn from MSF programmes in just two of Sudan’s 18 states and reflects only a fraction of the crisis, while the true scale of the phenomenon remains unknown.

Women and girls accounted for 97 percent of survivors treated in MSF programmes. The RSF and allied militias were found to be primarily responsible for the systematic abuse.

Children among the survivors

“Sexual violence is a defining feature of this conflict – not confined to front lines, but pervasive across communities,” Ruth Kauffman, MSF emergency health manager, said in a statement.

“This war is being fought on the backs and bodies of women and girls. Displacement, collapsing community support systems, lack of access to healthcare and deep-rooted gender inequalities are allowing these abuses to continue across Sudan.”

Following the RSF’s capture of el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, on October 26, 2025, MSF treated more than 140 survivors fleeing to Tawila. Among them, 94 percent were attacked by armed men, with many reporting assaults along escape routes.

The assaults “deliberately targeted non-Arab communities as a means of humiliation and terror, echoing previous RSF atrocities such as the dismantling of Zamzam camp”, the report said. The RSF took control of famine-hit Zamzam camp in the western Darfur region after two days of heavy shelling and gunfire in April 2025.

Survivors described attacks not only during fighting, but in everyday settings, such as fields, markets and displacement camps.

Children were also among the survivors. In South Darfur, one in five survivors was under 18, including 41 children younger than five, the organisation said.

MSF called on the United Nations, donors and humanitarian actors to urgently scale up health and protection services in Darfur and all of Sudan, and on all parties to the conflict to cease and prevent sexual violence and hold perpetrators accountable.

The attack on a teaching hospital in Al Deain, the capital of East Darfur state, has rendered the facility non-functional.

An attack on a ⁠hospital in Sudan’s Darfur region has killed at least ‌64 people, including 13 children, according to the head of ⁠the World ⁠Health Organization (WHO).

In a social media post, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Saturday that multiple patients, two female nurses and one male doctor were also among those killed in the attack on Al Deain Teaching Hospital in Al Deain, the capital of East Darfur state, on Friday night.

Another 89 people, including eight health staff, were wounded, he added.

The attack damaged the hospital’s paediatric, maternity, and emergency departments, rendering the facility non-functional and cutting off ‌essential medical services in the ‌city.

“As a result of this tragedy, the total number of fatalities linked to attacks on health facilities during Sudan’s war has now surpassed 2,000,” said Tedros, adding that over the nearly three-year conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the WHO had confirmed the killing of 2,036 people in 213 attacks on healthcare.

There was no immediate information about who was behind the attack.

The war between the army and the RSF erupted in mid-April 2023, unleashing a wave of violence that has led to one of the world’s fastest-growing man-made humanitarian crises, with tens of thousands of people killed and more than 12 million forced from their homes.

Both sides have been accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, while the RSF has been implicated in atrocities in Darfur that United Nations experts say bear the hallmarks of genocide.

“Enough blood has been spilled. Enough suffering has been inflicted,” Tedros said. “The time has come to de-escalate the conflict in Sudan and ensure the protection of civilians, health workers, and humanitarians.”

Local resident says casualties include mourners at funeral and children playing nearby.

A drone attack launched from Sudan has killed 17 people in Chad, according to the Chadian government, which has pledged to retaliate against any further strikes as the civil war in the neighbouring nation rages on.

A spokesman for the Chadian government announced the death toll on Thursday from the attack on the border town of Tine, which had been targeted despite “various firm warnings addressed to the different belligerents in the Sudan conflict and the closure of the border”.

It occurred as mourners gathered at a house on Wednesday for a funeral, according to a local resident quoted by the Reuters news agency, who reported there were two explosions and casualties included mourners and children playing nearby.

Local government sources said it was not immediately clear who was behind the attack, according to Reuters.

Chadian President Mahamat Idriss Deby called a meeting of the defence and security council on Wednesday night, ordering the army to “retaliate starting from tonight to any attack coming from Sudan”, according to a presidency statement.

Early on Thursday, the government said Chad had strengthened its security presence at the border and could potentially carry out operations on Sudanese territory.

Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) denied involvement in a post on Telegram, blaming the Sudanese army.

Porous border

The conflict in Sudan between its military and the RSF began in April 2023. The war has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced more than 12 million – nearly one million of them fleeing under fire to Chad, according to the United Nations.

The border between Chad and Sudan, which is nearly 1,400km (870 miles) long and located in a desert region, is porous and difficult to control.

Almost the entirety of Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan bordering Chad, has been captured by the RSF. The last major city there under the military’s control, el-Fasher, was seized by the RSF in October. The UN has accused the paramilitary group of carrying out massacres with “hallmarks of genocide”.

On February 21, the RSF claimed control of the border town of Tina, which is separated from Tine in Chad only by a narrow stream bed that is dry most of the time.

Chad closed its eastern border with Sudan last month after clashes linked to the war killed five Chadian soldiers. Its government said the move was aimed at preventing “any risk of the conflict spreading”.

Drones a key weapon of war

Drones have become a key weapon used by both Sudan’s military and the RSF.

The Sudanese army has received Iranian-made drones and Turkish and Russian military support.

The RSF, which has no air force of its own, has been equipped through a network of supply routes reportedly running through Chad and other transit states with reports pointing to the United Arab Emirates as a key supporter, an allegation that Abu Dhabi denies.

In the first two months of 2026, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project recorded 198 strikes by both sides, at least 52 of which caused civilian casualties. The attacks killed 478 people.

The United Nations is warning that rapidly escalating drone warfare in Sudan has killed more than 200 people in little over a week as schools, hospitals, and civilian infrastructure become targets.