Alyona Synenko Spokeswoman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 300 children and 70 caretakers were evacuated from Maygoma orphanage in Khartoum and taken to safety in the city of Madani, about 200 kilometers south of Sudan. The children, between one month and 15 years of age, had been caught in Sudan’s raging war.
“Infants and children with special needs were among the children from the orphanage; a total of 300 children and 70 caretakers had been caught in the crossfire of Sudan’s raging war. We evacuated them and took them to safety in Madani city, 200 kilometers south of Sudan, following a request from the Ministry of Social Development in Sudan,” said Synenko.
She further revealed that upon the arrival of the children in Madani, they were transferred to the care of the Ministry staff. And that some of the children ‘were very weak’ and the operation to get them to safety required guarantees of safe passage from the warring generals.
“We are talking about children who need special medical care, which they have been deprived of for weeks,” Syenko said
According to Christophe Sandoz, head of delegation at the ICRC, the evacuees between one month and 15 years old spent incredibly difficult moments in an area where the conflict has been raging for weeks without proper access to health care, especially for children with special needs.
“Some of the evacuated children suffer from mental health conditions that could be exacerbated by the stressful conflict environment they were living in,” Sandoz said.
Ammar Ammar, the regional communications chief of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), said that a number of children had died from various illnesses at the orphanage before the evacuation.
‘We confirm the deaths, but we cannot provide a specific number; the deaths were caused by fever and dehydration as well as malnutrition,” said Ammar.
According to UNICEF, more than 13.6 million children in the country are in need of humanitarian assistance to survive. Half of that number is suffering from acute malnutrition, and half of them may die if not helped.
Since the fighting began in mid-April, more than 1800 people have been killed, according to the armed conflict location and event data project.
Fighting broke out in Sudan in mid-April, between the army and Chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, also known as Hemeti, who commands the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). Most of the fighting has been around the capital; however, violence has spread to other parts of the country.
