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Africa|Starving Children Eat Animal Feed in Besieged Sudanese City
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/world/africa/sudan-starving-children.html
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At least 260,000 civilians trapped in El Fasher face a dire choice: risk being starved or bombed if they stay, and raped or killed if they flee.
By Declan Walsh
The reporter reached besieged residents on some of the few satellite internet connections in a city with little food.
Sept. 15, 2025, 12:01 a.m. ET
The city’s last functioning hospital has been bombed over 30 times. Between 30 and 40 severely malnourished children arrive every day, seeking help. There’s nothing to give them but animal feed.
“Even we’re eating animal feed,” said Dr. Omar Selik, tilting his camera during a video call to show his meal: a sludgy paste made from pressed peanuts that is usually given to cows, camels and donkeys. “There’s nothing else.”
A map locating El Fasher in the Darfur region of Sudan.
200 MILES
EGYPT
Nile
Port Sudan
SUDAN
CHAD
ERITREA
Khartoum
El Fasher
Tawila
ETHIOPIA
SOUTH SUDAN
DEM. REP. OF CONGO
El Fasher is the worst battleground of Sudan’s brutal civil war. For nearly 18 months the city, in the western region of Darfur, has been under siege by paramilitaries trying to starve it into submission. Fighters have erected a 20-mile earthen wall around its boundaries.
That leaves residents with a dire set of choices. Stay, and risk being bombed or starved. Run, and risk being killed, robbed or sexually assaulted.
“People seem to have forgotten us,” said Dr. Selik, breaking into tears as he spoke. “Oh my God, it’s a very painful story.”
