UN spokesman calls for more funding amid worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan

The worsening humanitarian crisis in Sudan drives up the urgent need for a massive ramp-up of international funding as conflicts in the war-torn country enters the third year, said a UN spokesman on Friday.

At a regular press briefing in Geneva, Jens Laerke, spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), said the crisis shows no signs of abating.

"As the fighting in Sudan enters a third year with no viable peace in sight, the Sudanese are trapped in a humanitarian crisis of industrial proportions. Two out of three people need aid, that's 30 million people," he said.

The continuous fighting has caused a colossal trail of suffering to Sudanese, said UN refugee Agency in a recent post, warning that as funding for the regional response is less than 10 percent of what is needed, basic needs for conducting operation in the country is left unsatisfied.

"This, of course, demands a massive ramp-up of international support. What we see instead is donors pulling back funding across the world," said Laerke. According to the World Food Program (WFP), the ongoing conflict in Sudan has plunged the country into the world's worst famine disaster, with nearly half of its population facing the threat of famine. Meanwhile, Sudan's medical system has also sustained severe damage, causing soaring maternal mortality rate.

Sudan has been engulfed in conflict since April 2023, when fighting broke out between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, cited by the UN, the conflict has claimed at least 29,683 lives.

UN spokesman calls for more funding amid worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan

UN spokesman calls for more funding amid worsening humanitarian catastrophe in Sudan

The death toll from a landfill collapse in the central Philippine city of Cebu has risen to eight by Monday morning as search and rescue operations continued for another 28 missing people.

The landfill collapse occurred on Thursday as dozens of sanitation workers were working at the site. The disaster has already caused injuries of 18 people.

Family members of the missing people said the rescue progress is slow, and the hope for the survival of their loved ones is fading.

"For me, maybe I’ve accepted the worst result already because the garbage is poisonous and yesterday, it was raining very hard the whole day. Maybe they’ve been poisoned. For us, alive or dead, I hope we can get their bodies out of the garbage rubble," said Maria Kareen Rubin, a family member of a victim.

Families have set up camps on high ground near the landfill, awaiting news of their relatives. Some people at the site said cries for help could still be heard hours after the landfill collapsed, but these voices gradually faded away.

Bienvenido Ranido, who lost his wife in the disaster, said he can't believe all that happened.

"After they gave my wife oxygen, my kids and I were expecting that she would be saved that night because she was still alive. But the night came and till the next morning, they didn't manage to save her," he said.

Death toll in central Philippine landfill collapse rises to eight