Trending 
A blaze tore through a displacement camp in Sudan, killing a young child and leaving hundreds without shelter after they had already fled the country’s brutal conflict.
Sudan has been engulfed in war since April 2023, when fighting erupted between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict has claimed tens of thousands of lives and forced nearly 12 million people from their homes.
The fire, described as “catastrophic”, erupted on Monday at Al-Omda camp near Tawila in North Darfur, according to Abu Bakr Haroun, deputy head of the camp’s management committee.
Haroun said the blaze claimed the life of a three-year-old child, injured 13 others, destroyed 548 shelters and killed numerous livestock.
On Tuesday, the UN’s International Organisation for Migration reported that 514 families were displaced by the fire and had moved into open spaces in Tawila.
Haroun told AFP that the incident was “perhaps the worst we have seen in all our years in North Darfur”.
One resident, Omar Abdullah Ahmed, highlighted an “urgent need for shoes and blankets”.
“I lost all my money in the fire. We lost everything. We weren’t even able to take anything out of our homes. They were completely burnt down,” he told AFP.
Images captured by AFP inside the camp showed heaps of ash marking where tents once stood. The few structures that survived were coated in thick black soot.
Although humanitarian agencies have distributed food and clean water, Haroun said the assistance was “not enough to meet 10 percent of the needs”. He added that only two communal kitchens in the camp remain operational.
“We need tents for people to take refuge in. There are no blankets, and the cold temperature at night is very harsh,” he said.
Tawila is already sheltering hundreds of thousands of displaced people from El-Fasher and other towns across North Darfur, straining scarce resources and weakened infrastructure.
The war has effectively divided Sudan, with the army in control of the north, centre and east, while the RSF and allied forces dominate the west and parts of the south.
