First humanitarian aid plane lands in Sudan

A first plane loaded with “eight tons” of aid including “surgical equipment” landed on Sunday in Sudan where it should allow “to treat 1,500 patients” in the country where most hospitals are out of order because of the fighting between the two rival generals.
The plane, which also carries humanitarian personnel, took off from Amman and landed in Port-Sudan, a coastal city 850 km east of Khartoum where the fighting is concentrated. Sudanese airspace has been closed since April 15 as fighting started at Khartoum airport.

According to the ICRC, the shipment contains “anesthetic products, dressings, suture material and other surgical items”.

This equipment “will allow us to treat 1,500 wounded people. We now hope to be able to deliver it quickly to the largest hospitals in Khartoum”, Patrick Youssef, the ICRC’s regional director for Africa, told journalists.

Yet, he warned, in order to deliver the aid “we need more security guarantees in Khartoum and Darfur”, where most of the fighting, which has left more than 500 people dead in over two weeks, is still going on. In Darfur, the situation is “very difficult”, he adds, “the populations are moving, in normal times we would follow them but in the current situation it is impossible.”

For the doctors in Sudan, the main thing is to restore water and electricity and to get the fighters out of some of the facilities. They also need alternative solutions for the 15 bombed hospitals and teams to take over from doctors who in some cases have not stopped working for two weeks.

Since mid-April, 528 people have been killed and more than 4,000 injured, according to the Sudanese Ministry of Health. However, this figure is still very provisional as the bodies littering the streets are inaccessible and therefore impossible to count.

Besides, tens of thousands were uprooted from their homes.