Famine is spreading in Sudan’s western Darfur region, UN-backed experts warned on Thursday, as a grinding war between the army and paramilitary forces has left millions hungry, displaced and cut off from aid.Since April 2023, the conflict between Sudan’s army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands, displaced 11 million and triggered what the United Nations calls one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.In an alert issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), global food security experts said that “famine thresholds for acute malnutrition have now been surpassed” in North Darfur’s contested areas of Um Baru and Kernoi, near the border with Chad.”These alarming rates suggest an increased risk of excess mortality and raise concern that nearby areas may be experiencing similar catastrophic conditions,” the IPC experts said.They added that the spread of famine came as the paramilitary takeover of North Darfur capital El-Fasher led to “massive displacement” of civilians into surrounding areas, “straining the resources” of local communities and “driving up acute food insecurity and malnutrition”.El-Fasher, long the Sudanese army’s final stronghold in Darfur, fell to the RSF last October after 18 months of bombardment and starvation.Its fall — which was accompanied by reports of mass killings, rape and abductions — pushed at least 127,000 people to flee to nearby towns already under strain, according to UN data.Both warring sides have been accused of committing atrocities throughout the war.The UK on Thursday sanctioned six people accused of carrying out atrocities or contributing to the violence by providing mercenaries and military equipment.The measures targeted senior commanders in both the army and the RSF.”Through these sanctions, we will seek to dismantle the war machine of those who perpetrate or profit from the brutal violence in Sudan,” British foreign minister Yvette Cooper said in the statement.- Fragile areas -Thursday’s alert, which is not a formal famine classification, signals severe food security and nutrition crises based on the latest data.It comes nearly three months after the IPC confirmed famine conditions in El-Fasher and Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, about 800 kilometres (500 miles) to the east.Kadugli endured a punishing RSF siege for much of the country’s nearly three-year conflict before the army broke the blockade this week. Nearby Dilling, where the army also broke an RSF siege earlier this month, is believed to be experiencing similar famine conditions though lack of access and ongoing insecurity has prevented a formal declaration.The IPC said that 20 more areas in Sudan’s Darfur and neighbouring Kordofan were at risk of famine.Across Darfur, access to lifesaving and nutrition services remains severely constrained, the IPC said.In Um Baru, children with severe acute malnutrition have little access to treatment, while in Kernoi only 25 percent of affected children are enrolled in treatment programmes, it added.Fighting between the army and the RSF in Kordofan — now a key battleground — has displaced about 88,000 people since October, the latest UN figures show.The IPC experts said that prolonged displacement, conflict, and erosion of health, water and food systems “are expected to increase acute malnutrition and food insecurity”.Across Sudan, more than 21 million people — almost half of the population — are now facing acute food insecurity, with two-thirds of the population in urgent need of assistance, according to the UN.

“They drove us out at gunpoint,” says Lebanese citizen Zeinab Qataya, who fled her adopted home in Syria after the fall of Bashar al-Assad and returned to her country to live in a camp built by Hezbollah.The construction of the Imam Ali Housing Compound has proved controversial, but Lebanese and Syrian families pushed out of villages just over the border in Syria say they now rely on the Iran-backed movement for safety.Hezbollah has acknowledged intervening in Syria’s civil war on Assad’s behalf starting in 2013 from their foothold in the Qusayr area, home to border villages like Zeita where thousands of Lebanese Shiites have lived for decades. The militant group was driven out of Syria during the campaign that toppled Assad, but it still holds sway in this pocket of northeast Lebanon, whose government has since vowed to disarm them.”They burned our homes,” says Qataya, a 56-year-old who fled Zeita for the Hezbollah-run compound. “What matters to us is… being able to return home safely.”- Images of martyrs -More than half a million Syrian refugees returned to their country from Lebanon after an Islamist coalition’s victory over Assad in 2024.The residents of the Imam Ali Housing Compound, meanwhile, were coming the other way.”The compound houses between 700 and 1,000 people,” said a Hezbollah official accompanying an AFP team in a guided tour of the camp in the Hermel area.”They are mostly Lebanese, with some Syrians,” all coming from border villages the group controlled before Assad’s fall, he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.The Lebanese nationals living in Syria had retained their citizenship, but made the area around Qusayr their home, living and working alongside local Sunni residents.In the dry mountain winds, children returned from a Shiite religious celebration in Hermel and ran past the camp’s store and barber shop to their ad hoc school.The walls of the local mosque had images of slain Iranian generals, including renowned covert operations commander Qassem Suleimani, glued on them.Portraits of killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah and current leader Naim Qassem hung from housing units.Hezbollah played a key role in Syria’s 13-year civil war, fighting alongside Assad’s forces.When it first established itself in Qusayr, thousands of Syrians were forced to flee, but it hastily retreated from the country after Assad’s ouster.The border in the area is porous and poorly demarcated, which contributed to Lebanese nationals settling in Syria and facilitated the smuggling for which the region is known.- Iranian donations -In the compound, few residents were willing to speak to journalists, viewing them with suspicion.Under Assad, Syria was part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and enabled the transfer of weapons and money from Iran to HezbollahThe new authorities in Damascus have rejected Iranian influence and attempted to cut off the pipeline to the Lebanese movement.Much of the Hermel compound’s funding comes from private donations from Iran, the Hezbollah member said.According to the group’s al-Nour radio, the complex comprises 228 housing units.When it was built last year, some media outlets critical of Hezbollah accused it of using the compound to harbour officials from the Assad government.”We are not harbouring regime remnants here,” said Ali al-Masri, an official in the Hermel municipality, calling the allegations “utter nonsense” and insisting that most in the camp were civilians.In January, Lebanon’s military said that it carried out a raid after “some media outlets and news websites circulated information about the harbouring of wanted individuals and the presence of weapons inside a compound” in Hermel.The raid, it said, “did not result in any arrests or seizures”. – ‘Living happily’ -According to the UN, around 115,000 people have entered Lebanon from Syria since the fall of Assad, many of them since the sectarian massacres that targeted the Alawite minority on the Syrian coast in March.Around a million Syrian refugees who previously fled the civil war remain in Lebanon.Khodr Ghurab, a 62-year-old van driver, said he was displaced from Zeita on December 8, the day Islamist-led rebels reached Damascus and Assad fled to Russia.Ghurab, a father of four, accused the Lebanese state of not helping them, “as if we were not Lebanese”.”In Syria, education and transport were free… we were living happily.”