Hundreds of children separated from families while fleeing violence in Sudan’s west Darfur

CAIRO (AP) – Hundreds of children have arrived in a refugee camp without their families as thousands of people fled violence in the Sudanese city of el-Fasher in the past month, with more children disconnected from their families arriving every day, officials said.

The U.N. said more than 100,000 people fled el-Fasher in western Darfur beginning in late October when the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces took back el-Fasher from the Sudanese army.

UNICEF recorded the arrival of 354 children without immediate family members in a refugee camp in Tawila, about 70 kilometers (43 miles) west of el-Fasher, between Oct. 26 and Nov. 22. Their parents disappeared or were detained or killed along the way, officials said.

UNICEF, the U.N.’s child protection agency, said Friday that 84 children were reunited over the past month with their families, mostly in Tawila where many international aid organizations are providing assistance to people impacted by the fighting in el-Fasher, the North Darfur capital seized by the RSF last month.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said at least 400 children have arrived to Tawila without their parents. Some reached the camp with the help of extended relatives, neighbors and strangers who didn’t want to leave them alone in the desert or el-Fasher, NRC advocacy manager Mathilde Vu said Thursday.

“Many children arrived with clear signs of hunger, extremely skinny. They’re so bony, dehydrated,” she said, adding that some show psychological distress including becoming restless, mute or withdrawn, crying constantly, describing nightmares or getting into fights.

The latest mass displacement began when the RSF left hundreds dead in el-Fasher, which was the Sudanese army’s last stronghold. The war between the RSF and the military began in 2023, when tensions erupted between the two former allies that were meant to oversee a democratic transition after a 2019 uprising.

The World Health Organization said fighting has killed at least 40,000 people and displaced 12 million. However, aid groups say the true death toll could be many times higher.

Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, described the children arriving in the camp as “bewildered, malnourished and dehydrated.”

“The issue is the extreme violence that many of these children witnessed is just astounding to me. Seeing their mothers disappear and, in some cases, family members are being shot. It’sjust it’s beyond anything I’ve heard,” Yett said Friday.

Though the children have received psychological support from aid workers, some still sleep on the ground and barely have one meal each day, Vu of the NRC said.

“People are hungry, thirsty, they need education, they need help care, they need psychosocial support and we need to give them now and not wait for peace to come into Sudan,” Vu said.

The RSF is largely made up of fighters from the Arab Janjaweed militia, which is accused of carrying out a government-backed genocidal campaign in Darfur in the 2000s in which around 300,000 people were killed.

Earlier this month, the RSF agreed to a humanitarian truce proposed by a U.S.-led mediator group, but Sudan’s military said the RSF must completely withdraw from civilian areas and disarm.

U.S. President Donald Trump previously said he plans to push for an end to Sudan’s war after being urged to take action by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.