UN agency plans to reach 380,000 vulnerable people in Sudan 'immediately'

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Tuesday that it plans to reach 380,000 vulnerable people in Sudan "immediately."

WFP Sudan told Anadolu in a statement that the agency remains committed to supporting the most vulnerable people in Sudan even after the recent looting of its main offices.

The agency said it has reached over 35,000 people in three states -- Gedaref, White Nile, and Kassalam -- with two-month worth of emergency food assistance, including refugees and internally displaced persons, since the temporary suspension was lifted last week.

It added that the emergency food distributions to newly displaced Sudanese in Gezira State will start in the coming days.

"We have every intention to continuing our life-saving work and are planning to reach over 380,000 people immediately," it said. "Further to that, we are scaling up our operations over the coming months to support nearly 5 million vulnerable people across Sudan including newly displaced, vulnerable host communities, and pre-existing refugees and IDPs (internally displaced persons)."

Close to a quarter of WFP food stocks were looted over the weekend in the agency's main offices in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.

Overall, some 17,000 metric tons of food had been taken, mostly in the first few days of the fighting, worth at least $13 million, according to the UN.

On April 15, fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Khartoum and its surroundings.

A disagreement had been fomenting in recent months between the Sudanese army and RSF over RSF's integration into the armed forces, a key condition of Sudan's transition agreement with political groups.

Sudan has been without a functioning government since October 2021, when the military dismissed Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok's transitional government and declared a state of emergency in a move decried by political forces as a "coup."

Sudan's transitional period, which started in August 2019 after the ouster of President Omar al-Bashir, had been scheduled to end with elections in early 2024.