The United Nations World Food Programme on Friday said the fighting in Sudan has caused a severe hunger crisis for 20.3 million people.

Of the country’s 46 million inhabitants, some 6.3 million people are suffering from life-threatening food shortages, said Eddie Rowe, the World Food Programme representative in Sudan.

Since the outbreak of fighting in April, the conflict has become more widespread, and it has gotten more difficult to deliver life-saving aid to the population, Rowe said in a video broadcast from Port Sudan.

He called on the conflict parties to facilitate the delivery of aid.

Earlier, the WFP had succeeded for the first time in bringing food to the particularly affected state of West Darfur on the border with Chad.

Rowe described the situation in West and Central Darfur as “catastrophic,” saying that most of the men in the villages in West Darfur were dead, injured, or had disappeared, leaving families to fend for themselves.

These families are barely surviving,” Rowe said.

War broke out in Sudan in mid-April following a long-simmering power struggle between de facto president Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and vice president Mohammed Hamdan Daglo.

The two generals had originally seized power together in 2021 but then became rivals. The fighting is concentrated in Khartoum and the neighbouring cities as well as in the Darfur region in the west of the country.

The parties to the conflict often fight near residential areas.

NAN