Dar Sumayat, January 22 (Darfur24)
Dozens of families have been forced to flee their villages in the Dar Sumayat area, in the eastern countryside of El Fasher, as worsening drought and an acute shortage of drinking water push residents to search for alternative water sources, local leaders and displaced families told Darfur24.
Residents said Dar Sumayat has suffered from a chronic water crisis for years, but conditions have sharply deteriorated in recent months, driving growing waves of displacement toward Tawila locality.
Several community sheikhs told Darfur24 that displacement sites in Tawila received new influxes of families during December and January, most of whom fled villages in eastern El Fasher due to thirst and the collapse of water supplies.
Ismail Ahmed, an elder at the Masal displacement camp, said at least 50 newly displaced families have arrived in recent weeks. He added that many are sleeping outdoors and under trees because of the absence of shelter, basic services, and humanitarian organizations operating in the area.
In a related account, Maryam Yahya, a mother displaced from the Qoz Bina area in Dar Al Salam locality, told Darfur24 that she has been displaced three times in the past year due to insecurity and lack of water in her home village in Dar Sumayat. She said her family eventually reached Masal camp in Tawila, only to continue facing severe difficulty accessing drinking water.
“We left to escape thirst, but water remains scarce here as well,” she said, appealing to humanitarian organizations to provide emergency water services and shelter for displaced families.
The director of the government’s Water and Environmental Sanitation Project in North Darfur, Engineer Abdul Shafi Abdullah Adam, previously told Darfur24 that water scarcity in Dar Sumayat is linked to the area’s geological conditions, where bedrock formations make groundwater extraction difficult, particularly during the summer season.