The UN World Food Program (WFP) said Tuesday it was scaling up assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled to neighboring Chad in the past week
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 11th July, 2023) The UN World Food Program (WFP) said Tuesday it was scaling up assistance to tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees who fled to neighboring Chad in the past week.
"There has been a huge surge in people fleeing from Sudan's Darfur region to Chad with 20,000 people arriving in Adre, a small Chadian town near the border, in the last week alone. So far more than 230,000 refugees and 38,000 returnees have crossed into Chad from Sudan," it said.
Many people coming to Chad escaped violence with only their children in their hands and the clothes on their backs, prompting WFP to mobilize everything it had to the border to support them, WFP Country Director Pierre Honnorat said.
The UN food charity has delivered nutrition assistance to nearly 152,000 new arrivals and host communities on the Chad-Sudan border but warned that resources were depleting fast. Estimates suggest that one in 10 children arriving from Darfur are malnourished.
The United States, a Sudan ceasefire facilitator, raised concerns in late June over reports of targeted ethnic violence in Darfur, mostly attributed to soldiers of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and allied militias, and called on the rebels and the Sudanese Armed Forces to hold accountable those responsible for attacks against civilians.
