Drone strikes UN convoy in Sudan's North Darfur amid ongoing conflict

Khartoum [Sudan], August 22 : A drone attack targeted a convoy of 16 trucks carrying urgently needed food to Sudan's famine-hit North Darfur region, the United Nations confirmed, as warring parties traded blame for the strike, Al Jazeera reported.

UN spokesperson Daniela Gross told reporters on Thursday that all drivers and personnel travelling with the World Food Programme (WFP) convoy were safe.

It remains unclear who carried out Wednesday's attack, marking the second incident in the past three months preventing a UN convoy from delivering aid to North Darfur, according to Al Jazeera.

The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) accused the Sudanese army of hitting the convoys as part of a drone strike on Mellit market and surrounding areas. The army, however, dismissed the allegation as "a fabrication to distract from what it termed the RSF's crimes," Al Jazeera reported.

In early June, a convoy from the WFP and the UN children's agency, UNICEF, was attacked while awaiting clearance to proceed to North Darfur's besieged capital, el-Fasher, killing five people and injuring several others, according to Al Jazeera.

Edem Wosornu, of the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said that some 70 trucks of supplies were waiting in the RSF-controlled city of Nyala to reach el-Fashir, but security guarantees were needed as humanitarian workers were coming under attack.

The strike comes amid growing international concern, with countries including the United States, Saudi Arabia and neighbouring Egypt voicing alarm at the worsening hunger situation in war-torn Sudan and calling for pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid through.

The conflict in Sudan began in April 2023, when violence erupted between the country's military and the paramilitary RSF in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to other regions, including western Darfur. UN agencies report some 40,000 people have been killed and nearly 13 million displaced, with nearly 25 million facing acute hunger.

In late June, the RSF and their allies announced the formation of a parallel government in areas under their control, mainly in the vast Darfur region, where allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity are being investigated.

The RSF has encircled el-Fasher, the only Darfur state capital not under their control, leaving an estimated 300,000 residents under a long siege amid fighting, Al Jazeera reported. Last year, a famine was declared in the Zamzam displacement camp in North Darfur, with the risk now spreading to 17 areas across Darfur and the Kordofan region, west of Khartoum.

WFP spokesperson Gift Watanasathorn urged all warring parties to "respect international humanitarian law". She added, "Humanitarian staff and assets must never be a target."

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