Africa

300 children rescued from orphanage

About 300 infants, toddlers and older chil­dren have been rescued from an orphanage in Sudan’s capital after being trapped there while fighting raged outside, aid officials said on Thursday.

The evacuation came after 71 children died from hunger and ill­ness in the facility since mid-April.

The tragedy at the Al-Mayqoma orphanage made headlines late last month as fighting raged outside between Sudan’s military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The deaths have highlighted the heavy toll inflicted on civilians since mid-April when the clashes erupted between forces loyal to General Abdel-Fattah Burhan and RSF forces led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo.

About 300 children at the Al-Mayqoma orphanage in Khartoum were transferred to a “safer location” elsewhere in the northeastern African nation, said Ricardo Pires, a spokesman for the United Nations (U.N.) children’s agency, UNICEF.

Sudan’s Ministries of Social Development and Health have taken charge of the children, while UNICEF has provided humani­tarian support, including medical care, food, educational activities and play, Pires said in an email to The Associated Press.

He said the children had re­ceived medical checks following their long journey to their new location, adding that “any child requiring hospitalisation will have access to health care.”

The International Committee of The Red Cross (ICRC), which helped with the evacuation, said the children, aged between one month to 15 years, were relocat­ed after securing a safe corridor to Madani, the capital of Jazira province, about 135 kilometres (85 miles) southeast of Khartoum. Seventy caretakers have been transferred with the children, the ICRC said.

“They (the children) spent incredibly difficult moments in an area where the conflict has been raging for the past 6 weeks with­out access to proper health care, an especially hard situation for children with special needs,” said Jean-Christophe Sandoz, the head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan.

Nazim Sirag, an activist who heads the local charity, Hadhreen, said in a phone interview that the children were ferried late Tuesday to a newly established facility in Madani. —AP

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