Tens of thousands flee Sudan’s largest refugee camp after attacks

Newshour

BBC

News, Daily News

4.4 • 984 Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2025

⏱️ 47 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's estimated that half-a-million people have been living in Zamzam - Sudan's largest refugee camp for people trying to escape the chaos of the country’s civil war. Now, tens of thousands are said to have fled the site after continued attacks from the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary. Ahead of a London-held conference that will discuss a potential ceasefire, we speak to a former UN envoy to Sudan.

Also in the programme: US President Donald Trump, alongside the leader of El Salvador, defends the American deportation of Venezuelans accused of gang violence to Salvadoran prisons; and an all-female group of celebrities, including pop star Katy Perry, head to space.

(Photo: Women and babies at the Zamzam displacement camp, close to al-Fashir in North Darfur, Sudan, January 2024. Credit: MSF/Mohamed Zakaria/Handout via REUTERS)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the BBC World Service coming to live from London with me, Sean Lay.
0:10.7	Tomorrow Tuesday is the second anniversary of the outbreak of civil war in Sudan.
0:15.4	An anniversary no one has caused to celebrate.
0:18.7	The British government is marking the occasion with the major conference
0:21.3	in London of countries willing to support efforts to broker a peace. Of the millions displaced from
0:26.7	their homes within Sudan or in exile from it, around half a million had been surviving in
0:32.2	Zamzam in Darfur, the country's largest camp for those forced from their homes.
0:42.8	The camp, though, has now been attacked by the rapid support forces at RSF,
0:46.4	once part of the state military, now in revolt against the army.
0:51.1	The UN says 400 people were killed, tens of thousands have left on foot.
0:55.1	One man living in another centre of the displaced, Abu Shuk, which has also been attacked, sent us this voice message, but he asked us not to reveal his name.
1:00.4	The situation right now is completely deteriorating due to the siege imposed by the RSF and also
1:10.4	as a result of the continuous fighting in North Starford State in general
1:16.0	and in Al-Fashir City, the capital of the North Starvo State, thousands of civilians living with
1:23.8	no water, no food, no medicine, Everything is getting bad. They cannot access to food
1:31.2	because of lack of money. They cannot access to water because many water resources that we
1:39.4	have here in the camp have been destroyed, specifically yesterday. We have the main water resources.
1:47.0	We have just implemented a project using solar power energy
1:52.0	to at least to provide water for the civilians here in the camp.
1:57.0	But unfortunately, it was destroyed yesterday by the RSF artillery shilling and in today morning
2:05.9	there was no water at all in this in the camp in the last few weeks depend on Zamsam
2:14.5	camp depend on the market of the Zam Zam Camp to deliver some goods from there.
	...

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