ALBAWABA - The Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General, Clementine Nkweta-Salami, El-Fasher city in Western Sudan, has been rocked by fighting involving "heavy weaponry,".
According to Clementine Nkweta-Salami, the UN's humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, violence has erupted in heavily populated areas of El-Fasher, putting approximately 800,000 people at risk. Wounded citizens were being brought to hospitals, and civilians were attempting to leave the conflict, Nkweta-Salami explained.
UN chief Antonio Guterres said Saturday he was "very concerned about the ongoing war in Sudan. We need an urgent ceasefire and a coordinated international effort to deliver a political process that can get the country back on track,” he said in a post on social media site X.
Sudan has been at war for more than a year, with the army led by the country's de facto leader, Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), controlled by his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemedti).
The violence has killed tens of thousands of people and prompted more than 8.5 million to flee their homes, creating what the United Nations calls the "largest displacement crisis in the world".
The RSF has captured four of Darfur's five state capitals, a region the size of France that is home to roughly one-quarter of Sudan's 48 million people living there.
Nkweta-Salami expressed major concern over the growing clashes in El-Fasher. "I am gravely concerned by the eruption of clashes in (El-Fasher) despite repeated calls to parties to the conflict to refrain from attacking the city," said Nkweta-Salami.
"I am equally disturbed by reports of the use of heavy weaponry and attacks in highly populated areas in the city center and the outskirts of (El-Fasher), resulting in multiple casualties," Nkweta-Salami added.
