PORT SUDAN, Sudan, July 11, 2025 (BSS/AFP) - The number of severely malnourished children in Sudan's battleground state of North Darfur has doubled since last year, the UN children's agency said on Friday.

Since April 2023, war between Sudan's regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people and driven over 14 million from their homes.

North Darfur state and its besieged capital El-Fasher have been particularly badly hit, with famine declared last year in three vast displacement camps outside the city

In a statement on Friday, UNICEF said more than 40,000 children suffering from severe acute malnutrition in North Darfur were admitted for treatment between January and May this year -- twice as many as during the same period last year.

"Children in Darfur are being starved by conflict and cut off from the very aid that could save them," said UNICEF's Sudan representative, Sheldon Yett.

Across the five Darfur states, cases of severe acute malnutrition rose by 46 percent in the first five months of the year compared to the same period in 2024.

The battle for El-Fasher -- the last major city in Darfur still under army control -- has intensified in recent months.

Hospitals have been hit by shelling, aid convoys attacked and access for humanitarian aid is now almost entirely blocked.

The United Nations said this week that nearly 40 percent of children under five in El-Fasher were suffering from acute malnutrition, including 11 percent with severe acute malnutrition.

UNICEF also reported significant rises in malnutrition in other recent battlegrounds.

Severe acute malnutrition rose by over 70 percent in neighbouring North Kordofan state, by 174 percent in the capital Khartoum and nearly seven-fold in the central state of Al-Jazira.

Khartoum and Al-Jazira were recaptured by the army earlier this year, but the country remains effectively split.

The army holds the east, north and centre while the RSF controls nearly all of Darfur and parts of the south.