The World Food Programme (WFP) is warning of a rapidly deteriorating humanitarian emergency in Sudan on Friday, with conditions in the besieged city of El Fasher in Sudan’s Darfour region described as “beyond horrific.” 

Speaking at a briefing to UN reporters in Geneva, Ross Smith, WFP’s Director of Emergency Preparedness, said “anywhere between 70 and 100,000 people” are believed to be trapped inside the city,  amid “network blackouts” and “mass killings.”

The Rapid Support Forces (RSF, overran the city, the strategic capital of North Darfur, in October 2024 with little or no access by outside groups in recent months. 

Satellite images and survivor accounts, portray “the city as a crime scene with the mass killings, with burned bodies, with abandoned markets,” and WFP has “no partners left on the ground,” Smith added, saying that he had “no verified reports… that any of the community kitchens are operating.”

Attempting to flee is also extremely dangerous. “The city and its surrounding roads are littered with mines [and] unexploded ordnance,” he said. Those who escape face “robbery, looting and gender-based violence,” and must often pay “extraordinary amounts for transport.” Many arrive in surrounding areas “under the open sky without medicine and shelter.”

Smith said WFP continues to call for “unimpeded access into El Fasher,” noting that the agency now has “agreement in principle with the Rapid Support Forces that control the area for a set of minimum conditions to enter the city.” 

But after more than a year and a half under siege, he said, “the essentials for survival have been completely obliterated.” WFP has food and trucks ready to move “once that safe passage is secured.”

A massive displacement crisis in Tawila

Sudan is the world’s largest displacement crisis with more than 12 million people uprooted inside and outside the country.

In the Darfur region, one of the worst affected, Smith highlighted the extreme strain on Tawila, once a small desert town which has now swelled into a massive IDP holding more than 650,000 people. Families fleeing famine, atrocities, and recent fighting in El Fasher and Zamzam camp are now living in “very negative structures, grass, straw structures, etc.” He warned that “cholera and disease outbreak is widespread,” and that while WFP can deliver food to Tawila, “there’s very limited health care, sanitation, clean water and other… support.”

Across Sudan, WFP is reaching “over 4 million people per month,” and “half a million people in and around Tawila” were assisted in November. But escalating violence against aid workers—including an incident in which “one of our trucks was hit… and [a] driver is seriously injured”—continues to disrupt operations.

Smith warned that shifting battle lines are putting new communities at “grave risk,” including in nearby Kordofan, where the UN Refugee Agency, UNHCR reported on further deterioration over  the past two weeks. After a week of heavy fighting, the RSF reportedly seized control of a Sudanese Armed Forces base in Babanusa, West Kordofan.

In South Kordofan, “civilians remain trapped in besieged cities such as Kadugli and Dilling, and as women, children, and the elderly find ways to escape, men and youth are often left behind due to specific high risks they face along flight routes such as detention by armed groups for perceived affiliation with parties to the conflict,” UNHCR said.

Preventing the devastation seen in El Fasher from being repeated “must be a top priority for all of us,” said Smith.  

He added that WFP faces imminent funding shortfalls, Smith also said: “Pipeline breaks are right in front of us,” and assistance will require “almost $ 700 million” over the next six months.

Gaza: Winter storm deepens suffering 

Meanwhile, in Gaza, humanitarian and health conditions remain dire – with a massive storm Byron leaving thousands of tents flooded, increasing disease risks and leaving families homeless once again. 

Speaking to reporters from Gaza, WHO representative Rick Peeperkorn to the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), described the widespread infrastructure destruction he had witnessed and the growing public-health crisis aggravated by Storm Byron, the massive winter storm that swept through the region this week. 

“The storm environment struck Gaza with force,” Peeperkorn said. “The deplorable conditions, especially shelter conditions, are deepening the suffering of already displaced families. 

He described how high ocean waves had hit particularly hard at the thousands of families sheltering in “low lying and debris-studded coastal areas with no drainage or protective barriers, simply the heaps of garbage everywhere along the roads. 

“And we’ve seen, of course, winter conditions, combined with poor water and sanitation causing a surge in acute respiratory infections, including influenza –  as well as hepatitis, diarrhoeal diseases, etc,” Peeperkorn said.

A horrific video shows a Palestinian man showing how his tent has flooded with winter rain as storm Byron soaks Gaza displacement camps.

Tens of thousands of displaced people in Gaza now have their tents flooding with water, with nowhere to go. pic.twitter.com/dmNWbgrmHh

— Ihab Hassan (@IhabHassane) December 11, 2025

Hospitals only partly functional 

WHO’s early warning system has recorded 1.47 million acute respiratory infections and over 670,000 acute diarrheal cases since being established in January 2024. But that’s only partial data insofar as diagnosis and testing are severely constrained by a shortage of clinics, laboratories and diagnostic equipment, Peeperkorn added. 

Only about half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are functioning, along with 46 primary health care centers, while another 84 clinics out of a total of 195 are partly functional. 

North Gaza remains the most severely underserved, with tens of thousands of displaced people and almost no functioning medical facilities within the “Yellow Line” that demarcates Israeli-controlled areas from areas controlled by Palestinians – where the militant Hamas group has largely reasserted itself. 

Among the roughly 650 essential medicines on WHO’s list, “50% of them are zero, or close to zero, stock.” Peeperkorn said the Shifa Hospital director “was almost crying,” as major hospitals operate “without CT, without MRI, without proper X-ray, without proper ultrasound equipment.”

Despite immense shortages, he observed creative reconstruction efforts, where clinic and hospital reconstruction teams are managing to rebuild using repurposed materials salvaged from destroyed buildings.

Critical need for medical evacuations

Peeperkorn called on Israel again to reopen the traditional medical evacuation route from Gaza to West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinian hospitals, saying: “There’s no reason why this… cannot be reopened.” WHO is prepared to facilitate daily evacuations once access resumes, he said.  

While WHO and partners have managed to evacuate some 10,645 people since the war began in October 2023 to third countries in Europe, the Middle East or elsewhere, there are still some 18,500 patients awaiting medical evacuation, including 4096 children. And over 1000 patients have died while waiting. 

Call for sustained ceasefire and rehabilitation 

Peeperkorn meanwhile warned that makeshift shelters, widespread debris, and deteriorating sanitation pose long-term threats,  especially for children and the elderly. 

“There’s an enormous amount of garbage and debris everywhere, it’s an environmental health disaster,” he said. 

And while formal reconstruction processes remain on hold, pending further negotiations between Israel and Hamas, mediated by the US and Arab brokers, the situation on the ground is not static, Peeperkorn warned. 

“The 2.2 million people of Gaza cannot wait before we renegotiate again, those materials need to get in now.”

Image Credits: UNICEF/Mohammed Jamal, Google Maps , IOM .