CAIRO (AP) — The United Nations called on countries in the Middle East and Europe on Monday to ramp up aid efforts in Sudan to address the deepening humanitarian crisis.
Sudan has been rocked by fighting for over two months as the military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces battle for control of the country. Sudan’s Health Ministry said Saturday that more than 3,000 have been killed in the conflict, which has decimated the country's fragile infrastructure and sparked ethnic violence in the western Darfur region.
“The scale and speed of Sudan’s descent into death and destruction is unprecedented,†U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said at the opening of a U.N.-sponsored meeting in Geneva.
Representatives from Egypt, Germany, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the African Union and the European Union met to discuss how to help the northeastern African nation. The U.N. says its emergency aid program launched after the war broke out on April 15 has received less than 16% of the required $3 billion in aid.
Qatar's foreign minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said the Gulf kingdom would be giving $50 million to the program.
Katja Keul, minister of state at Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, said Berlin would pledge 200 million euros of humanitarian assistance to Sudan and the region.
The U.N.’s top humanitarian official, Martin Griffiths, said the U.N. would inject a further $22 million into the program.
It remained unclear if Saudi Arabia and Egypt would provide further financial contributions to the humanitarian initiative.
Around 24.7 million people, over half of Sudan's population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, the U.N. says. Over 2.2 million people have fled their homes to safer areas elsewhere in Sudan or crossed into neighboring countries, according to the latest U.N. figures.
On Sunday morning, the country's warring forces began a three-day cease-fire, brokered by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. The cease-fire is the ninth truce since the conflict began, although most have foundered.
The conflict has turned the capital, Khartoum, and other urban areas into battlefields. The paramilitary force, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has occupied people’s houses and other civilian properties, according to residents and activists. The army, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, has staged repeated airstrikes in densely populated civilian areas.
The province of West Darfur has experienced some of the worst violence. with tens of thousands of residents fleeing to neighboring Chad. The Rapid Support Forces and affiliated Arab militias have repeatedly attacked the province's capital, Genena, targeting the non-Arab Masalit community, rights groups say.
The province's former governor, Khamis Abdalla Abkar, a Masalit, was abducted and killed last week after he appeared in a televised interview and accused the Arab militias and the paramilitary force of attacking Genena. The U.N. and Sudan's military blamed the Rapid Support Forces in the killing. It has denied that.
Last week, Griffiths described the situation in West Darfur as a “humanitarian calamity.â€
