Sudan: MSF teams launch emergency response as thousands flee Zamzam camp

Following the Rapid Support Forces’ (RSF) large-scale ground offensive on Zamzam camp in North Darfur that started on 11 April, hundreds of thousands of people have fled to the neighbouring city of El Fasher. They join communities who are already besieged and deprived of life-saving aid. 

Twenty-five thousand more people reached the town of Tawila further west, where overwhelmed MSF teams are currently expanding activities to cope with the most pressing medical needs. Teams have treated children with severe dehydration and people with gunshot and blast injuries. 

What is MSF doing?

Our teams set up a health post at the entrance of Tawila to provide new arrivals with water, food, and immediate medical care.

We refer critical cases to the local hospital where we have been working since last October. About 1,600 patients so far have required emergency outpatient services, mainly because of severe dehydration. 

“We are treating children who were literally dying of thirst on their journeys,” said Marion Ramstein, MSF project coordinator in Tawila. “So far we have received over 170 people with gunshot and blast injuries. 40 percent of them are women and girls.”

"People tell us that many injured and vulnerable people could not make the trip to Tawila and were left behind. Almost everyone we talk to says they lost at least one family member during the attack.” 

The risk of ethnic violence

Horrific reports are emerging from Zamzam camp, where hundreds of people are estimated to have been killed. Fighters were said to be going door-to-door, shooting people hiding in their homes and burning large parts of the camp.

Casualties include eleven staff from the humanitarian organisation Relief International, which was running the only remaining clinic in the camp after MSF suspended all its activities there in February due to escalating violence and blockades.

We urge the RSF and all armed groups in the area to spare and protect civilians and to ensure that those who want to flee can do so without further harm. States and diplomatic actors must use their leverage to translate hollow statements into concrete actions.

There have been repeated warnings from the UN and many observers about the risk of mass killings and ethnic violence in the region. El Fasher and the surrounding displacement camps are mostly inhabited by people from the non-Arab Zaghawa and Fur ethnic groups, while most of the RSF fighters and their allies originate from Arab tribes. 

More is needed

After two years of a catastrophic war on people met by neglectful indifference, we cannot simply resign ourselves to the current collective failure to provide vital assistance where it’s most needed.

“A massive humanitarian response is needed, now more urgently than ever,” said Rasmane Kabore, Head of MSF in Sudan.

“If the roads to El Fasher are blocked, then air operations must be launched to bring food and medicines to the estimated one million people who are trapped there and being starved.

“A scaled-up response is also needed in Tawila, where some of the survivors are being received and local capacities are overwhelmed.”

MSF and several other actors are launching emergency interventions in Tawila, but much more is needed in terms of water, food, medical care and shelter.