‘We’ve lost everything’: inside a Sudanese town where children die of hunger every day

In the small town of Tawila, in Sudan’s North Darfur state, at least 10 children are dying of hunger every day.

In recent months, tens of thousands of people fleeing North Darfur’s capital, the besieged and war-torn El Fasher, about 45 miles (70km) to the east, have sought refuge in the town, overwhelming Tawila’s one functioning health clinic.

“We anticipate that the exact number of children dying of hunger is much higher,” said Aisha Hussien Yagoub, the woman responsible for health in the civilian administration that runs Tawila. “Many of those displaced from El Fasher are living far from our clinic and are unable to reach it.”

Hunger is not the only killer. Malaria, measles and whooping cough have also been spreading like wildfire.

Hussien said she knew of 19 women who died during labour in the first two weeks of July alone. Still more have died from untreated injuries sustained amid fighting in the vicinity of El Fasher’s two refugee camps, Abu Shouk and Zamzam.

The city has been under a months-long siege by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), the paramilitary group engaged alongside allied militia in a brutal civil war against the Sudanese army and its allies. Tawila, itself the scene of fierce fighting last year, is the nearest place of relative safety for refugees who have managed to escape through El Fasher’s western gate, the city’s only open exit route.

Many do not make it to the town, dying on the long and terrifying walk from El Fasher, along roads that run past burnt-out villages and are targeted by armed gangs.

“I left my husband in El Fasher and fled here with my child,” said 25-year-old Hadeel Ibrahim, whose two-year-old daughter, Rital, has been admitted to the clinic with malnutrition, which has left her unable to walk. “She used to be a lively child who ran around and played with other kids,” Ibrahim said. “Look at her now. I don’t have money and there are no jobs.”

Ibrahim’s aunt, who fled El Fasher before her and asked to remain anonymous, said: “There is no food here; you are lucky if you get one meal a day. We had a stable life in El Fasher; now we have lost everything.”

Tawila’s civil administration was established by the Sudan Liberation Army, a rebel group that took control of the local area after the withdrawal of the army and the RSF. Until recently, women were afraid to go out and collect firewood or grass for their animals for fear they would be raped by militiamen who roamed the town’s outskirts.

Hussien gave the Guardian a brief tour of the clinic, as fighter jets roared overhead and the sound of aerial bombardment rang out in the distance – a constant reminder of the relentless war, which has killed thousands of people, displaced millions more, and put more than half of the prewar population at risk of acute hunger, according to the World Food Programme.

The wards lacked doors, windows and beds, all lost in the fighting last year.

“This place was completely empty when we reopened it,” said Hussien, who has been a displaced person all her life, first in the Abu Shouk camp and now Tawila, after attacks on the camp made life unbearable. “Unless we get more financial support, we’ll lose more children and mothers.”

The town, known throughout Sudan for the production of chewing tobacco, had six camps for internally displaced people before the outbreak of the current war. Another six have since been opened.

Earlier this year, UN agencies and every international NGO apart from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) left the El Fasher area because of the lack of security. In August, MSF said two of its trucks carrying supplies for people in the Zamzam camp were stopped by RSF fighters in Kabkabiya, west of Tawila, preventing aid workers from completing their journey.

An RSF adviser said the trucks had since been allowed to leave Kabkabiya but had become stuck as a result of poor conditions on the road to El Fasher caused by the rainy season.

The army has also been accused of putting up obstacles to aid. In February it ordered aid agencies to stop using the Adré crossing in Chad to transport aid into Darfur, which is mostly controlled by the RSF. Last month it rescinded the order temporarily for three months, but aid agencies say only a fraction of the aid that is needed is getting through. An army spokesperson was approached by the Guardian for comment. It has previously denied impeding aid deliveries.

Related: Children ‘at death’s door’ as famine declared in Sudanese refugee camp

At a former school in Tawila that has been turned into a temporary camp for displaced people, hundreds of families crowd into classrooms.

Ozaz Ibrahim said she lost her mother when they fled El Fasher, and had to leave her husband behind. Many of the other women make a bit of money doing manual work, but injuries Ibrahim sustained during a series of miscarriages in El Fasher mean she is unable to lift heavy objects. Instead, her two boys – seven and nine years old – earn a tiny income by carrying passengers on the family donkey. “I have no choice,” she said. “I have to send my children to work so that we can get some food.”

The UN deputy humanitarian coordinator for Sudan, Toby Harward, described the situation in Tawila, El Fasher and neighbouring towns as a humanitarian catastrophe that was worsening daily.

“Hundreds of thousands of innocent people are in immediate grave danger,” said Harward, who recently visited the region. “The entire area is like hell on earth.”