This monthly report from Team Zamzam covers the period from mid-February to mid-March 2025; it highlights the current humanitarian situation and speaks to present challenges.
Introduction: from the coordinating counselor of Team Zamzam, received March 23, 2025 (translated by Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen)
In the last two months, the people of Zamzam IDP camp have been living under skies filled with terror and have faced constant atrocities committed by the terrorist Rapid Support Forces (RSF) militia. The crimes against innocent civilians range from killing, to looting villages, to sexually assaulting young girls, and forcing Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) to face displacement yet again.
The newly displaced of North Darfur state have fled to Zamzam in wave after wave, many from villages of Dar Salam locality (southeast of Zamzam). Burning everything, the RSF have also shelled IDPs and citizens inside Zamzam camp; they are using heavy weapons, including advanced howitzers; long-range missiles have become the grim daily experience of the people of Zamzam, El Fasher and its surroundings
This tragic situation of the IDPs and citizens fleeing from the Abu Zurega area and its surrounding villages.
It is difficult to find appropriate words to describe the situation of this substantial area to the south of Zamzam, but the scale of suffering must shake any living conscience—and the tragedy exceeds what can be absorbed. Most of these victims are children, women, the elderly and widows. Their homes have been looted of all their belongings and supplies, and they have been left in an extremely difficult situation; they must camp in the open air under trees in the valleys, with none of the basic necessities of life.
Security situation
The general security situation is worsening, becoming more and more unstable and dangerous around North Darfur’s capital El Fasher, Zamzam IDP camp, and neighboring villages, especially in and around Abu Zurega. Following recent deliberate criminal attacks by the RSF, many villages have been looted and people have lost all their belongings and provisions. There is a suffocating siege of the area and neighbouring villages.
We must be clear: This is a campaign of complete village destruction. Dwellings and other buildings have been burned; property is routinely stolen; and there has been a relentless destruction of private service institutions, such as health centers, water sources, and markets. This in turn has forced all remaining citizens to flee towards Zamzam.
Despite the already rapidly deteriorating conditions and increasing suffering experienced by the displaced people in Zamzam, extra pressure has been added with tens of thousands of people pouring in from the Abu Zika area as well as those mentioned above.
El Fasher, capital of North Darfur, as well as its neighboring IDP camps and surrounding villages has been suffering from systematic destruction since the start of war in Sudan two years ago; but many have survived thanks to the strong will and perseverance of its people who refused to be humiliated and remain rock-like in their steadfastness.
The steadfastness and perseverance exhibited by the people of Zamzam can hardly be imagined. And in fact, Zamzam has been deliberately targeted because it has become the only safe shelter for those fleeing many states of Sudan—as far as from Khartoum.
For this reason, Zamzam has been subjected to brutal attacks by the Al Daglo (“Hemedti”) terrorist militia (the RSF) on a daily basis. The worst attack on these IDPs came on Tuesday, February 12 and Wednesday, February 13. During this especially brutal attack, during which they killed unarmed displaced civilians, they also burned shops and all the IDPs’ markets, and looted all that the IDPs owned. This was an act fully confirming the barbarism and genocidal aggression of these criminal gangs.
The repeated attacks on the Zamzam IDP camp occur in full view of the international community, which to date has not moved to hold these war criminals accountable, thereby only encouraging the RSF gangs to continue their barbarous predations
Worsening living conditions
Living conditions inside Zamzam camp are simply indescribable, with shortages of everything, even drinking water. This is the result of increasing numbers of new IDPs, fleeing coming from all directions, and secondly, from the closure of all internal and external roads to the camp. Zamzam, like El Fasher, is now completely besieged on all sides, most critically in its loss of the road connecting it with El Fasher.
Many local charities and organizations that used to provide some basic services and support have stopped and most of the water wells have been closed out of fear and terror, as well as a lack of fuel for water pumps and water trucks. (Even as the squares and shelters have been filled with new IDPs, more than 2,000 shops were burned by the RSFattacks. And of the 700 vehicles previously in use, more than 180 are water tanks—and all are out of service due to lack of fuel.)
Health conditions are also deteriorating
Health and wellness are rapidly deteriorating inside and outside the IDP camps for reasons directly linked to the closure of all roads and the widespread, deliberate destruction caused by the bombing of health centres; this has been accomplished by long-range missiles, artillery, drones, and mortars. The Saudi Hospital is the only one that remains partially operational, with personnel and donors working in very complex conditions; medical staff work in underground trenches and some of them in the homes of citizens neighbouring the Saudi Hospital.
In addition to these horrific conditions, there is a complete lack of basic life-saving medicines in the hospital, even as many of the wounded and injured are in critical need.
A severe water crisis in Zamzam and El Fasher
Since the beginning of March, IDPs in Zamzam camp have been suffering from a severe drinking water crisis due to the shortage of water and fuel sources, and the lack of maintenance of a group of existing water pumps. Currently in Zamzam there are about 270 pumps, of which only 17 are working. Some 250 of these pumps are out of service, while some in need of maintenance or repair. Additionally, there has been a failure to maintain existing cisterns.
Water must now be obtained by hand and hoof with the loss of fuel for trucks delivering water and pumps that provide the majority of water.
Most of the other wells are out of service due to the complete lack of fuel in the camp and because of the besieging and the closure of all roads leading to the El Fash region, especially Zamzam camp, which has led to a severe water crisis. This has as context the estimate that the number of displaced people in the camp now exceeds 1 million.
Today, the price of a barrel of water has reached 12,000 Sudanese pounds and most IDPS cannot afford to buy it. Some of the pumps in the camp and water wells yield only salty and thus undrinkable water. Poor water quality is also causing additional health issues. A representative group of IDPs in the camp launched an urgent appeal to all charitable, humanitarian, international, regional organisations to drill more wells that operate with solar energy instead of relying on fuel (and thus losing their capacity when fuel is not available).
For their part, many humanitarian organisations and local charities have appealed to the state authorities to drill new wells and maintain the pumps to rescue the people of the camp from the acute water crisis.
Work carried out by Team Zamzam between the beginning of February 2025 to this moment in March 2025:
Team Zamzam launched three campaigns to serve as mass iftars, providing meals for people displaced from areas and villages west of El Fasher—the areas of Shagrat, Al-Kamat, Um Hijlit, Amar Jadid, Jarjir and Um Jamaat. These people are now in the shelter centers of Zamzam. Team Zamzam found these newly displaced people suffering from a disastrous state of hunger, fear, cold, thirst, cold.
In response, Team Zamzam targeted a total of almost 6,000 families. These families included orphan children suffering from severe malnutrition, disabled people, women, widows, and the elderly. They were given an organised iftar and their children rejoiced in this iftar and wished that this initiative might come back again to feed them. They thanked Team Zamzam, the initiator and founder of such an amazing humanitarian effort.
Following up with the mass iftar in the second week of February, Team Zamzam organized a distribution of food packages on February 19 – 21 and February 25; these consisted of flour, red lentils and sugar; altogether they targeted almost 2,000 of the poorest families category, especially those suffering from severe hunger and malnutrition.
On March 6 and 9, Team Zamzam March distributed another round of food packages consisting of flour and red lentils to help almost 3,000 families recently displaced from Dar es Salaam locality.
Following this distribution, several attempts were made for provision of water but all were unsuccessful for lack of fuel.
Total number of families benefited: 10,500
Total number of persons benefited: 43,000
Type and quantity of food items distributed:
Sugar: 1,822 kilograms
Flour: 2,125 kilograms
Red lentils: 1,275 kilograms
Rice: 675 kilograms
The two photographs above are the only ones not taken by Team Zamzam
A huge percentage of the children in Zamzam are either moderately or severely malnourished. In its January 2024 epidemiological study, MSF established a Crude Mortality Rate (deaths per day per 10,000 of population) of 2.5. This means that given its vast size and catastrophic humanitarian conditions, roughly 1,000 people were dying every week…every week. As the camp continues to grow and conditions continue to deteriorate, this number will rise rapidly, indeed likely exceeds it now by a substantial number.
Recommendations and concerns of the people of Zamzam Camp
The humanitarian, security, and health situation is so dire that the situation is impossible to describe fully. Through surveys, we found that people’s main concern is the provision of drinking water, food, medicines and others. But notably, water comes first on the list of priorities. Eight out of the current 17 functioning water pumps are the wells repaired by Team Zamzam in the last three years; but considering the current situation, people are demanding that more pumps be repaired immediately and appeal to Team Zamzam to do whatever they can to help them relieve them of this water crisis.
One of Team Zamzam’s greatest accomplishments is to have fully rehabilitated eight key water well,. beginning in May 2021. A ninth was in progress when war broke out in April 2023. But these wells can serve only a small fraction of Zamzam’s vast and growing population–all desperate for water.
This respite from thirst for many has been replaced by the most acute shortages for all:
Waiting for water can be, as it has been in the past, enormously time-consuming