By Olivia Le Poidevin
GENEVA, April 28 (Reuters) - Five million children across Sudan's Darfur region are facing extreme deprivation, the United Nations children's agency said on Tuesday, issuing an emergency warning over the situation as the civil war in the country enters its fourth year.
The warning, known as a "Child Alert", is used sparingly by UNICEF and is designed to signal that a situation has reached a critical threshold. It is the first time the agency has issued one in 20 years for Darfur.
"Children are at a breaking point across the region, childhood is again defined by fear, by loss. Homes have been burned, schools and health facilities have been damaged or destroyed," 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 been a focal point of violence, including ethnically charged killings, in the civil war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces.
The region was also the scene of atrocities and mass displacement in a conflict that escalated in 2003, after rebels took up arms against Sudan's government, which used Arab militias to suppress the revolt.
Despite the current crisis deepening, UNICEF said it had attracted little global attention compared to the conflict two decades ago, with the agency's humanitarian appeal for Sudan for this year only 16% funded.
Across Sudan, at least 160 children were reportedly killed and 85 injured in the first three months of 2026, marking a significant increase compared to the same period last year, UNICEF said.
The gravest impact on children has been observed in the long-besieged city of al-Fashir, UNICEF said, where since April 2024 at least 1,300 children were killed or maimed, and there were reports of sexual violence, abductions and recruitment by armed groups.
Acute malnutrition reached famine levels in two more areas of North Darfur in February, according to the U.N.-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).
(Reporting by Olivia Le Poidevin; Editing by Aidan Lewis)
