'We arrived here barefoot with nothing'

War-displaced Sudanese go hungry in refuge town as conflict in Darfur continues without an end in sight, write Ibrahim Abdallah and Menna Farouk

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Crouching over a small wood-scrap fire in Sudan's war-battered Darfur region, Aziza Ismail Idris stirs a pot of watery porridge, the only food her family has had for days.

“No organisation has come. No water, no food — not even a biscuit for the children,” Ms Idris said, her voice brittle with fatigue.

Having fled a brutal paramilitary attack last month on Zamzam, once one of Sudan’s largest displacement camps, she and her five children are among the estimated 300,000 people who have since arrived in the small farming town of Tawila, according to the United Nations.

“We arrived here barefoot with nothing,” she said, recalling her escape from the Zamzam camp, about a 60-kilometre desert trek away, also in the vast western region of Darfur.

The few aid organisations on the ground lack the means to meet the urgent needs of so many displaced people.