Doctors Without Borders halts activities at Sudan’s Zamzam camp due to heavy fighting

CAIRO (AP) — Doctors Without Borders on Monday halted its operations in Sudan’s famine-stricken Zamzam camp due to an escalation of attacks and fighting in the vicinity.

The international medical aid group, also known by its French name Médecins Sans Frontières and acronym MSF, said fighting between the Sudanese military and its rival paramilitary the Rapid Support Forces intensified in the camp, located in North Darfur.

The escalation made it “impossible” for the group to provide life-saving humanitarian needs to thousands of displaced people in the area, it said in a statement, adding it had suspended all activities in Zamzam, including at its field hospital.

“Halting our project in the midst of a worsening disaster in Zamzam is a heart breaking decision,” said Yahya Kalilah, the group’s head of mission in Sudan.

Kalilah said that being close to violence, experiencing great difficulty in sending supplies, dealing with the “impossibility” of send experienced staff, and the uncertainty around routes out of the camp, left MSF with “little choice.”

Sudan plunged into war when fighting began in April 2023 between the military and the RSF after simmering tensions. As a result of fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and spread to the other parts of the country. The conflict that killed more than 24,000 people, forced over 14 million people out of their homes, and created famine across various parts of the country.

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The fighting in Zamzam ramped up on Feb. 11-12, according to the MSF. The field hospital received 130 wounded patients, most suffering from gunshot and shrapnel wounds.

The MSF facility in Zamzam can’t provide trauma surgery for those in critical conditions as it was originally established to address the significant malnutrition crisis unfolding in the camp.

Kalilah said that 11 patients died in the hospital, including five children, because staff couldn’t treat them properly or refer them to the local hospital in El Fasher, the regional capital. Access to water and food in the area has been more compromised because of the fighting, according to the MSF. The central market has been looted and burnt.

Zamzam camp hosts around 500,000 people and has seen displaced families newly arriving from the areas of Abu Zerega, Shagra, and Saluma, who told MSF teams of abuses in villages and roads in the El Fasher locality that include killings, sexual violence, lootings, and beatings.

“In January and December, two of our ambulances carrying patients from the camp to El Fasher were shot at,” Kalilah said. “Now it’s even more dangerous and as a result, many people, including patients requiring trauma surgery or emergency caesarean sections, are trapped in Zamzam.”