By Wilson Adekumola
No fewer than nine children have been reportedly killed and 50 others injured in Sudan’s war between the army and the paramilitary, Rapid Special Forces, the United Nation Children’s Fund revealed.
While explaining that some children are kept in schools and care centres for protection, UNICEF disclosed that hospitals have been forced to evacuate children as shelling has moved closer on the sixth day of the war that began on Saturday.
“The fighting has disrupted critical, life-saving care for an estimated 50,000 severely acutely malnourished children. These vulnerable children need ongoing, round-the-clock care, which is being put at risk by the escalating violence,” UNICEF said in a statement.
According to the UN humanitarian agency, “Children will continue to pay the price” if the violence is not stopped, BBC reported.
More than $40m (£32m) of vaccines and insulin are at risk of spoiling due to unprecedented power cuts in the ongoing Sudan crisis, UNICEF added.
The US embassy in Khatoum said in a statement that, as things stand, more than 270 people have died in the violence since Saturday.
Recall that the clashes in Sudan was caused by distinct power struggle between the two main factions of Sudan’s military regime.
The Sudanese armed forces are broadly loyal to Gen Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, the country’s de facto ruler, while the paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces, a collection of militia, follow the former warlord Gen Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti.
The power struggle was said to have its roots in the years before a 2019 upheaval that ousted the dictatorial ruler Omar al-Bashir, who built up formidable security forces that he deliberately set against one another.
