UN aid convoy reaches cut-off area of Sudan’s North Darfur

August 16, 2025 (EL FASHER) – A United Nations aid convoy has reached the cut-off Al Malha area in Sudan’s North Darfur state, a regional official said on Saturday, bringing desperately needed food through the only army-controlled border crossing from Chad.

“Eighteen trucks carrying 440 metric tons of aid… have arrived in Al Malha after a long period of suffering,” Abdel-Baqi Mohamed Hamed, the Darfur region’s humanitarian affairs coordinator, said in a statement.

He confirmed that the aid was provided by the World Food Programme (WFP) and entered via the Tine crossing, the sole corridor into the vast, war-torn Darfur region, which is controlled by the Sudanese army and its allies.

North Darfur is suffering a severe humanitarian crisis, with aid agencies warning of widespread malnutrition and a lack of access to healthcare, clean water and shelter amid a siege of the state’s capital, El Fasher, by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said that the lives of 640,000 children under the age of five in North Darfur are at risk from violence, disease and hunger.

The aid will be distributed to displaced people in Al Malha and several surrounding villages, Hamed said. The town is a key crossroads located 210 km (130 miles) northeast of El Fasher.