by india today news desk: As Fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary forces Continuing for nearly two months, at least 60 infants, toddlers and older children have died in the past six weeks at an orphanage in Khartoum.
Most of the children died due to insufficient access to food and fever. Over the past weekend, 26 of them died in the span of two days, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The dead included infants as young as three months old, according to death certificates and four orphanage officials and charity workers working at the facility.
Heartbreaking video shot by orphanage staff at the Al-Maykoma orphanage shows bodies of children wrapped in white sheets waiting for burial. In another video, two dozen children wearing diapers, many of them crying, sit on the floor of a room while a woman carries two jugs of water.
In another video, a woman can be seen sitting on the floor with her back to the camera and rocking back and forth with a child in her arms.
Describing the situation as “catastrophic”, an orphanage worker said the children had been moved to a larger room after heavy shelling last week that covered the facility with dust.
“It’s a horrific situation,” Afkar Omar Mustafa, a volunteer at the orphanage, said in a phone interview. “It was something we expected from day one (of the fight).”
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As the incident caused an uproar and alarm on social media, a local charity firm was able to distribute food, infant formula and medicines to the orphanage on May 28 with the assistance of UNICEF and the International Committee of the Red Cross, the AP reported.
Orphanage staff have called for the swift evacuation of children from Khartoum and warned that more children could die as food and medicinal supplies remain erratic.
Since 15 April, the Sudanese Army led by General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces led by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo have been fighting for control of Sudan.
The fighting has been accompanied by chaos and destruction in Khartoum and elsewhere in the country Homes and civic infrastructure are being vandalized or damaged by bullets and stray shells. The violence has also resulted in heavy casualties on civilians, especially children.
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According to Sudan’s Doctors’ Syndicate, which tracks civilian casualties, more than 860 civilians, including at least 190 children, have been killed and thousands more injured since the fighting began. However, this tally is likely to be much higher.
Fierce fighting in Sudan has resulted in the displacement of more than 1.65 million people, who have fled the war-torn country or moved to neighboring countries. The clashes have also disrupted humanitarian work by charity groups.
According to UNICEF, more than 13.6 million children are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in the crisis-hit African country.