Hundreds Of Children Separated From Families As They Escaped From The Massacre In Sudan

DOCmen UNICEF/Mohammed Jamal/Refuge from El Fasher, an 11-year-old child walked through settlements for displaced people in Tawila, North Darfur.

JAKARTA - Hundreds of children arrived in refugee camps without their families as thousands fled violence in Sudan's El-Fasher city in the past month. More and more children separated from their families arrive every day.

The United Nations said more than 100,000 people had fled the el-Fasher in western Darfur since late October when paramilitary Rapid Support Forces recaptured the el-Fasher from the Sudanese army.

UNICEF recorded the arrival of 354 children without close family members in a refugee camp in Tawila, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of the el-Fasher, between October 26 and November 22.

Their parents disappeared, were detained, or killed on the way.

UNICEF, the UN child protection agency, said on Friday, November 28, 84 children had been reunited with their families over the past month, mostly in Tawila, where many international aid organizations provided assistance to people affected by the fighting in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, which was seized by RSF last month.

The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) said at least 400 children had arrived in Tawila without their parents. Some reached the camp with the help of distant relatives, neighbors and foreigners who did not want to leave them alone in the desert or el-Fasher, said NRC advocacy manager Mathilde Vu.

"Many children come with clear signs of hunger, very thin. They are very thin dry, dehydrated," he said, adding that some showed psychological stress including being restless, silent, or pulling away, crying constantly, telling nightmares, or getting into fights.

The latest mass refugees began when RSF killed hundreds of people in the el-Fasher, the last stronghold of Sudanese soldiers.

The war between the RSF and the military began in 2023, when tensions erupted between the two former allies who were supposed to oversee the democratic transition after the 2019 uprising.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said fighting killed 40,000 people and displaced 12 million people.

However, aid groups say the death toll could actually be many times higher.

waiver Yett, a UNICEF representative in Sudan, described the children arriving at the camp as "confused, malnourished, and dehydrated."

The problem is, the extreme violence that many children witnessed was astonishing for me. Seeing their mother disappear and, in some cases, family members were shot. It was beyond my previous expectations," Yett said on Friday.