The humanitarian situation in the Sudanese city of El-Obeid is worsening rapidly, the United Nations said Friday, as displacement camps swelled with new arrivals.
The UN has been warning for weeks that atrocities similar to those committed during the paramilitary assault on the Darfur city of El-Fasher in October last year could be repeated in El-Obeid.
The UN's World Food Programme said El-Obeid's population had all but doubled, though it was only able to feed a fraction of them.
"The city continues to be stressed on food, water and fuel," said Abdallah Alwardat, WFP's Sudan country director, after visiting El-Obeid on Thursday.
"What we have seen, simply: a city over 500,000-600,000 population has almost double" that number due to internally displaced persons (IDPs) moving in from the wider Kordofan region, he told reporters in Geneva.
The war between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) that erupted in April 2023 has killed 200,000 people by some estimates and displaced upwards of 11 million. Several areas of Sudan have been plunged into hunger and famine.
A strategic hub in the southern Kordofan region, El-Obeid has been encircled for months by the RSF.
Alwardat said more than 120,000 people were living in camps, but many more were living with host communities or making their own shelter.
The WFP has provided food assistance to more than 100,000 people in the camps, "but there are many more IDPs in that city and they need urgent assistance," Alwardat said, speaking from Kosti in Sudan.
"We are providing not even the full food ration to the people, but even that reduced food ration is being shared by the recipients with other families."
WFP said it was putting food stocks into place to boost the number of hot meals and food assistance to more than 250,000 people in or around El-Obeid, if conditions allowed.
"It was very clear: whatever we are bringing into the city is the only lifeline for these people," Alwardat said after his visit.
"We want to do more for sure, but of course we are also stretched on our resources."
