UN humanitarian chief in Sudan, seeking guarantees on aid

Martin Griffiths, the UN’s under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency assistance coordinator, tweeted that he visited Port Sudan to reaffirm the UN’s commitment to the Sudanese.

On the last day of a tenuous truce, he arrived in the Red Sea port.

The conflict, caused by a power struggle between the country’s two senior generals, has raised concerns about the humanitarian situation for people besieged and displaced. How U.N. organizations can function with minimal people and resources under the pandemonium is unclear.

A ground convoy transported thousands of U.N. workers from Khartoum to Port Sudan more than a week after the deadly combat began on April 15. After two World Food Program workers were killed in southern Sudan fighting, some U.N. offices suspended operations. WFP will resume operations.
After months of rising tensions between Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan’s military and Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo’s Rapid Support Forces, Sudan’s civil war began.

Griffiths requested guarantees from the warring parties for humanitarian relief during a Port Sudan news conference. He said operating in Sudan was “extremely difficult” for the U.N.

He stated six World Food Program trucks transporting relief to western Darfur were looted on the road and identified Darfur and Khartoum as in need of aid.

“We’re not asking for the moon,” Griffiths said in the online briefing. We want humanitarian aid and individuals moved. Even without cease-fires, we do this in every country.”

The war has killed 550 civilians and wounded over 4,900. According to U.N. agencies, the violence has displaced 334,000 people in Sudan and tens of thousands more in Egypt, Chad, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, and Ethiopia.

Since the crisis began, 42,000 Sudanese refugees and 2,300 foreign nationals have entered Egypt. These villages including Port Sudan, 400 kilometers (250 miles) from Khartoum, lack essential services, worrying aid workers.

France, Britain, and now the US have evacuated their citizens from the country using Port Sudan as a base. But foreigners are still trying to escape.

The latest foreigners to depart Sudan are hundreds of Syrians who fled their civil turmoil over the previous decade.

Tariq Abdel-Hameed, a Syrian at Port Sudan, said a second Damascus-bound flight carrying 200 Syrians, largely pregnant women and ailing people, will leave Port Sudan later Wednesday.

The first flight arrived in the Syrian capital early Wednesday with 200 people, including 21 children. He indicated additional flights are coming.

Port Sudan was the final terminus for thousands of Sudanese and foreigners fleeing the country. Saudi warships have been transporting mostly foreigners, dual Sudanese nationals, and others to Jeddah across the Red Sea.