Sofie Karlsson, the spokeswoman for the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told The Washington Post that the situation was a “nightmare” and “we are very concerned about the potential humanitarian consequences as more people are displaced.” More than 300,000 people had fled the city in the past four days.
“Many on foot as they try to spare their lives. The horror in Sudan continues. Where are people going to go?” she tweeted.
The advance of the Rapid Support Force (RSF) into Wad Madani, the capital of the Jazira region, is another major victory for the group, following its capture of four out of five regional capitals in the western region of Darfur. It was unclear if the RSF, led by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, had seized the town entirely from the military, which is led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan.
Fighting between the two rival forces exploded on April 15 after months of escalating tensions over power-sharing. The two men had seized power in a 2021 coup against a civilian prime minister — killing hundreds of pro-democracy protesters — but soon turned on each other.
Sudan, a nation of 49 million people in the Horn of Africa, rapidly became one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The capital has been a battleground and around half the population needs aid, but efforts are severely underfunded as international attention focused on Ukraine and Gaza.
Wad Madani had a population of around 700,000 before the fighting broke out, but that swelled as families fled there to escape the fighting in the capital, where air force planes bombed civilian neighborhoods and paramilitary fighters invaded homes, robbing, raping and killing their inhabitants.
Despite massive overcrowding in Wad Madani, humanitarian agencies were able to operate there, providing food and medical services that were dangerous to offer in the capital.
Now that refuge is gone. During previous occasions when the RSF has seized territory, hospitals and humanitarian warehouses have often been attacked and looted. Women have frequently been attacked and civilian men and boys shot dead.
“The humanitarian nightmare is unraveling. The choices people have to make to protect their families, to make sure their daughters aren’t raped, to save what little they have are unfathomable to many of us but so real to the Sudanese who are living it,” Karlsson tweeted.
Wad Madani is also important because it’s the heart of Sudan’s grain-producing region. The harvest has already been disrupted because banks have closed and farmers were unable to purchase fertilizers and other equipment.