The warning is the first Child Alert issued by the United Nations children’s agency for Darfur in 20 years and is used only in the most severe emergencies to draw urgent international attention.“Children are at a breaking point across the region. Childhood is again defined by fear, by loss,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF’s representative in Sudan, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Port Sudan.“Children are bearing the heaviest weight of the war in Darfur.

Children are being killed and maimed, uprooted from their homes and pushed into extreme hunger, disease and trauma,” he said.Darfur, a vast region in western Sudan, has remained one of the epicenters of the conflict that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

The fighting has included ethnically driven killings, widespread displacement and repeated attacks on civilian infrastructure, reviving memories of the earlier Darfur conflict that began in 2003 when rebels rose against Sudan’s government and state-backed Arab militias launched a brutal counterinsurgency campaign.

UNICEF said homes, schools and health facilities across the region have been burned, damaged or destroyed, leaving children without access to education, medical care or basic safety.The agency warned that despite the worsening crisis, international attention and funding remain far below what is needed.

Its humanitarian appeal for Sudan this year is only 16% funded.Across Sudan, at least 160 children were reportedly killed and 85 injured in the first three months of 2026, a significant increase compared with the same period last year, UNICEF said.

The most severe impact has been recorded in Al-Fashir, the long-besieged capital of North Darfur, where at least 1,300 children have been killed or maimed since April 2024.UNICEF also reported cases of sexual violence, child abductions and forced recruitment of minors by armed groups in the area.

Acute malnutrition has worsened sharply, with famine-level conditions confirmed in two additional areas of North Darfur in February, according to the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

Aid agencies have repeatedly warned that restricted humanitarian access, continued shelling and the collapse of essential services are accelerating the risk of mass starvation, particularly among children and displaced families.

The conflict has displaced millions across Sudan and created one of the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies, with Darfur once again at the center of the crisis.

The military has freed the famous Red Sea Flour Mills Cooperation limited, which has had heavy deposits of wheat, grains, and pulses.

The occupied food could be enough to feed approximately 3.7 million starving Yemenis.

Adel Moukarshab, Yemen’s relief affairs coordinator said, “the Houthis were trying to create a food crisis in the city of 600,000 people to use as propaganda against the government offensive.”

Yemen’s Deputy Minister of youth and sport tweeted, “tons of wheat was under the control of Houthis. Houthis are the cause of death, killing, hunger and disease everywhere.”

A resident of Hodeidah, Abdulwahab Shoubail told UAE-based The National, “They looted many food stores of UN organizations and occupied warehouses of the World Food Programme and used them as hideouts for their soldiers and their military vehicles.”

Since Iran-backed militias have lost most of the illegally occupied areas of Yemen, it’s trying to push the narrative of famine against the Saudi-led coalition forces, in order to appeal international sympathy.

Another resident, Sameer Akhdar said, “The Houthis lost most of their power in Hodeidah. They have no military options so they are trying to push the city into famine to gain international sympathy and pressure the coalition to stop the military campaign to liberate the ports.”

Commenting on the disastrous methods adopted by the Houthis – Yemen’s Information Minister – Moammer al-Eryani tweeted, “I am surprised by the international silence on this. It is contrary to international law which states that international relief facilities should not be used as places of conflict and fighting.”

Since Monday, the coalition forces engaged in fierce confrontations against Houthi militias from Al-Saleh city till Al-Tis’een street in northern Hodeidah.

They have also destroyed Iran-backed military reinforcements in the directorates of Al-Jarrahi, Zabeed, Bait Al-Faqih and southern Hodeidah.