Besieged by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) for 18 months, hundreds of thousands in El Obeid, capital of the North Kordofan state in war-torn Sudan, suffer from a lack of food and water as Cholera rears its head again ahead of the monsoon’s peak.
“I am particularly disturbed by the deadly impact of drone strikes and other attacks that have reportedly resulted in both child casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including homes, schools, health facilities, water systems, and markets,” Vanessa Frazier, the special representative of the secretary-general for Children and Armed Conflict, said on July 21.
Over half of the 141 drone strikes on North Kordofan this year as of July 8 have been recorded in the three weeks since June. Most of them hit El Obeid, which is barely 40 km from the frontline of this war between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the RSF, now raging in its fourth year.
These attacks have damaged almost all of its fuel stations, driving gasoline prices to USD 15 per liter – even higher in the black market.
Also hitting water supply infrastructure, the RSF has left many parts of the city with no access to safe drinking water, forcing residents to use unsafe sources, Liesbeth Aelbrecht, the emergency coordinator in Sudan for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said on July 20.
“With the rainy season starting, conditions will get worse, and the risk of diseases like cholera will increase. Cholera was first reported in neighbouring West Kordofan state in late May. In North Kordofan, dozens of suspected cholera cases have since been reported, raising serious concerns that the outbreak may be spreading into the state,” she warned, following a field visit to the city.
The deadly disease threatens residents who are already weakening from hunger amid food shortages, worsened by the doubling of the city’s population due to the inflow of hundreds of thousands of people fleeing the RSF from other parts of the Kordofan and Darfur regions.
Many of the displaced had managed to escape from El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, whose defenses were overrun last October by the RSF, which then killed possibly tens of thousands, in a campaign that had the “hallmarks of genocide,” according to a UN investigation.
Read more: A bloodbath visible from space: RSF’s massacres in Sudan’s El Fasher
After taking over Darfur and consolidating control over most of western Sudan except for some small SAF holdouts in remote towns along the border with Chad, the RSF has been marching east, shifting the war’s center of gravity to the central region of Kordofan.
With its troops now encircling the city of El Obeid, which is a strategic node on the road from El Fasher to the national capital Khartoum, several UN agencies have been warning of a repeat of its genocidal campaign.
Read more: UNSC warns ‘imminent risk of mass atrocities’ as RSF amasses troops around El Obeid
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