JUBA: Mohammed Awad and his family are among dozens who escaped Sudan’s Tuti Island earlier this year amid a siege by the Rapid Support Forces, finding refuge at a shelter after surviving for months on scant food and the risk of disease.
The island in the middle of the Nile serves as a microcosm for the devastation unleashed by a war that began in April 2023.
More than 61,000 people are estimated to have died in Khartoum state during the first 14 months of Sudan’s war, significantly more than previously recorded, according to a new report.
Activists report that the Rapid Support Forces charged people large sums to evacuate them.

“There is no good food, and there’s a lot of diseases, there is no sleep, no safety,” Awad said, holding one of his children at the shelter for displaced residents in Omdurman, an army-controlled refuge. The island is one of 14 places across Sudan at risk of famine, according to experts. Dengue fever has ravaged Tuti, a close-knit farming community.
Sarah Siraj, a mother who left with her two children, said six or seven people were dying daily, and that she was only able to have her children treated for dengue, a mosquito-borne disease, once she reached Omdurman.
Charity kitchens have been forced to close in Tuti and elsewhere in the capital Khartoum due to lack of funding and supplies, and high prices.
Rabeea Abdel Gader, a nutrition guide, has been treating newly arrived families at a city shelter.
“We ask the mother about what they eat ... Sometimes the mother responds with her tears,” she said.
Meanwhile, Russia vetoed a UN Security Council resolution on Monday calling for an immediate end to hostilities in Sudan.

WASHINGTON: The United States imposed sanctions on Monday on an Israeli settler group it accused of helping perpetrate violence in the occupied West Bank, which has seen a rise in settler attacks on Palestinians.
The Amana settler group “a key part of the Israeli extremist settlement movement and maintains ties to various persons previously sanctioned by the US government and its partners for perpetrating violence in the West Bank,” the Treasury Department said in a statement announcing the sanctions.
The sanctions also target a subsidiary of Amana called Binyanei Bar Amana, described by Treasury as a company that builds and sell homes in Israeli settlements and settler outposts.
The sanctions block Americans from any transactions with Amana and freeze its US-held assets. The United Kingdom and Canada have also imposed sanctions on Amana.
Israel has settled the West Bank since capturing it during the 1967 Middle East war. Palestinians say the settlements have undermined the prospects for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital.
Israel views the West Bank as the biblical Judea and Samaria, and the settlers cite biblical ties to the land.
Settler violence had been on the rise prior to the eruption of the Gaza war, and has worsened since the conflict began over a year ago.
Most countries deem the settlements illegal under international law, a position disputed by Israel which sees the territory as a security bulwark. In 2019, the then-Trump administration abandoned the long-held US position that the settlements are illegal before it was restored by President Joe Biden.
Last week, nearly 90 US lawmakers urged Biden to impose sanctions on members of members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government over anti-Palestinian violence in the West Bank.