More than 100,000 people have fled al-Fashir in western Sudan since the end of October, when the RSF military force brutally seized the city and pushed out the Sudanese army.
Many of those fleeing have made it to Tawila, just west of al-Fashir. So far, the UN children's agency Unicef has registered over 350 children who have arrived without close family members. Their parents are said to have either disappeared or been killed along the way.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has a higher figure: at least 400 unaccompanied children. Some of them arrived with distant relatives, neighbors or strangers who did not want to leave the children alone in the desert.
"Many children arrived with clear signs of hunger, extremely thin. They are bony and dehydrated," says NRC's Mathilde Vu, describing children who have either become completely silent or are crying constantly, have nightmares and get into fights.
In the past month, more than 80 children have been reunited with family members, according to Unicef.
The problem is the extreme violence that many of these children have witnessed (...) Seeing their mothers disappear and in some cases family members being shot, notes Sheldon Yett, UNICEF's representative in Sudan.
