PORT SUDAN: The World Food Programme has called on the warring parties in Sudan’s conflict to grant full access to the agency as the country faces the imminent threat of famine.
Sudan has been gripped by war since April 2023 between the regular armed forces led by the country’s de facto leader Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) led by his former deputy Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.
The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced millions and resulted in one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Both sides have been accused of committing war crimes, including targeting civilians and preventing aid from reaching those in need, as well as using methods that amount to starving millions.
“We want complete and unfettered access as well as the ability to get in through as many different entry points into Sudan as possible,” WFP’s executive director Cindy McCain told AFP on Sunday.
She warned that with the whole of Sudan currently at famine alert level and famine already declared at Darfur’s Zamzam camp, “it will spread so it’s really urgent and that we can get in and we can do it at scale.”
About 11.3 million people have been uprooted by the war, among them nearly three million who have fled outside Sudan, according to the UN refugee agency.
About 26 million people face acute food insecurity, and a UN-backed assessment in August said the war had pushed the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur state into famine.
“For us it’s about getting food and trucks in there so it’s important that the gates stay open,” McCain said, adding that this included not just Sudan’s border crossing with Chad but all crossings into the country.
“We need as many of them open as possible,” she said.
On October 18, Western countries including Britain, the United States, France and Germany urged both sides in war-torn Sudan to let in “urgently required” aid to millions of people in dire need.
“The two sides’ systematic obstruction of local and international humanitarian efforts is at the root of this famine,” the European and North American nations said in a joint statement.

BAGHDAD: Iraq has condemned Israel’s use of its airspace to attack neighboring Iran in a protest letter sent to United Nations chief Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Baghdad said Monday.
A statement from government spokesman Bassim Alawadi said the letter condemns “the Zionist entity’s blatant violation of Iraq’s airspace and sovereignty by using Iraqi airspace to carry out an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran on October 26.”
Alawadi said the Iraqi foreign ministry would also bring up “this violation” in talks with the United States, Israel’s close ally and top arms provider.
Israel on Saturday launched air strikes on military sites in Iran, risking further regional escalation more than a year into the Gaza war and a month into the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon.
The Israeli raid was in retaliation for an Iranian missile attack on October 1, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and a Revolutionary Guards commander.
The Iranian military said that some Israeli aircraft had fired a “small number of long-range missiles... from a distance,” inside the US-patrolled airspace of Iraq.
Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said on Monday that Tehran was “sure that no neighboring country has given this permission to the Zionist regime” to use its airspace.
“We certainly hope that our friends in Iraq will announce the necessary reactions, including by registering their protest with the United Nations, and will not allow such incidents to happen again,” Baghaei added.
Baghdad has close ties with Tehran but also a strategic partnership with Washington, which has troops in Iraq as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.
While the Iraqi government has sought to avoid being dragged into the escalating regional conflict, some pro-Iran factions have launched attacks on US forces in the region and claimed responsibility for drones sent to Israel.
One Tehran-aligned group, the influential Kataeb Hezbollah, condemned on Sunday the Israeli use of Iraqi airspace to attack Iran as a “dangerous precedent.”
It accused the United States of being complicit in the Israeli attack, warning both of a response to this “aggression.”