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The delivery was supposed to be the first to arrive in the embattled city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, in more than a year.
June 4, 2025, 6:12 a.m. ET
Five members of a United Nations convoy carrying humanitarian supplies to an embattled city in southwestern Sudan were killed in an attack that injured other aid personnel and burned many of the trucks, the organization said this week.
The attack occurred late Monday when a convoy of 15 trucks from the United Nations’ World Food Program and the global body’s children’s agency, UNICEF, had stopped for the night in a North Darfur market town after traveling 1,100 miles from Port Sudan.
The United Nations said in a statement that the delivery was to have been the organization’s first humanitarian convoy to arrive in the embattled city, El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur State, in more than a year. According to the World Food Program, its trucks were carrying about 1,100 tons of aid for about 100,000 people in the city.
After two years of civil war, El Fasher is the last major city in the Darfur region that the Sudanese Army holds. In recent weeks, the city has been the target of an offensive by the rebel Rapid Support Forces, which control much of western and southern Sudan.
The United Nations said that the agencies had shared details of the convoy’s route in advance with forces in the area and were negotiating for access to complete the journey to El Fasher.
“Many of our trucks were burned in the attack, and critical humanitarian supplies were damaged,” the organization said in a statement from New York. “It is devastating that the supplies have not reached the civilians in need.”
The attack underscored the perils that aid agencies face as they try to scale up deliveries to civilians driven to the brink of famine by a war that the United Nations says has displaced more than 13 million people.
The United Nations protested last week after shelling by the Rapid Support Forces struck a World Food Program warehouse in El Fasher. On Sunday, an airstrike by Sudanese armed forces on the North Darfur market town where the convoy stopped this week — El Koma, an R.S.F. stronghold — caused scores of casualties, according to local news reports.
UNICEF said that its two trucks in the convoy had been carrying nutritional supplies for acutely malnourished children, along with health and water treatment supplies. It said that the two trucks were undamaged in the attack, and that they would deliver aid to communities in the area.
“The plan is to move them elsewhere,” Eva Hinds, a spokeswoman for UNICEF in Port Sudan said. “This has just cemented our resolve to stay and deliver. We are not leaving.”
