(CNN) โ A key border crossing for humanitarian aid to enter Sudan will be reopened, the countryโs government said Thursday, as the war intensifies, causing a growing number of people in the country to need food, water, shelter, and medical care.
Sudanโs Sovereign Council announced it will open the Adre crossing, on the countryโs border with Chad, for a period of three months. It was closed in February by the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), which alleged that the crossing was being used to move weapons.
The vital crossingโs reopening follows growing calls for greater humanitarian assistance in Sudanโs Darfur region, as civil war between the SAF and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) continues to ravage the country. Sudan is at a โbreaking point,โ one United Nations agency said earlier this week.
At a UN Security Council meeting on August 6, the United States accused the SAF of โrestricting humanitarians from accessing supplies through the critical Adre crossing.โ Similarly, the United Kingdom said the armed forces were โobstructing aid delivery into Darfur, including shutting the Adre crossing, the most direct route to deliver assistance at scale.โ
This comes as โfamine conditions are prevalentโ in parts of Sudanโs North Darfur state, including in the Zamzam camp โ located near the stateโs capital El Fasher and home to around half a million people displaced by civil war โ according to an Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) report released in July.
Some 26 million people are in need of assistance in Sudan โ more than half of the countryโs population, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
More than 10 million people have fled their homes since civil war broke out in April 2023 and over half the population faces acute hunger, UN OCHA detailed.
On Tuesday, UNICEF, the UNโs childrenโs agency, said Sudanโs humanitarian crisis was โthe biggest in the worldโ for children, by numbers,
โTens of thousandsโ of Sudanese children are at risk of death if action is not urgently taken, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder warned at a press briefing. โThousands of children have been killed or injured in Sudanโs war. Sexual violence and recruitment are increasing. And the situation is even worse where an ongoing humanitarian presence remains denied,โ Elder said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The-CNN-Wire
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