Unexploded ordnance on the ground of a street in Khartoum, after the recapture of the city by the Sudanese army, April 27, 2025. (Credit: Tayeb Siddig/Reuters.)
Three farming villages in southeastern Sudan, located near the border with Ethiopia, were attacked and looted Sunday by Ethiopian militias, local farmers and volunteers reported Monday.
The al-Fashaga border triangle — a vast area of fertile land covering about 1.2 million hectares — has been disputed for decades by Sudan and Ethiopia, with recurring tensions. The clash occurred at the start of the rainy and planting season, as Sudan has been devastated since April 2023 by a civil war that has killed tens of thousands.
"Yesterday, while we were in our fields, the Shifta militias arrived, surrounded the village, opened fire, and stole cows and tractors at gunpoint," a 29-year-old farmer from the Sudanese village of Wad Kouli, located 11 kilometers from the Ethiopian border, told AFP by phone.
Farther north, in the village of Wad Aroud, one of the attacked villages, farmers had to leave their fields in a hurry when they heard gunfire, "fearing for our families," said another 32-year-old farmer.
"When we arrived, we found that members of the militia had stolen cows and sheep from the village," before withdrawing into Ethiopia.
According to the local resistance committee, a volunteer group coordinating aid across Sudan, the attacks targeted several other villages in Gedaref state, where nearly a million people are suffering from acute famine, according to the latest U.N. estimates.
The committee said the "repeated and dangerous violations" are "devastating for food security and the livelihoods of people in the region." Residents say the attacks prevented them from cultivating their land during the key planting period, which coincides with the rainy season in the region from July to September.
Nearly 25 million people are suffering from extreme food insecurity in Sudan, a country plunged into the world's largest humanitarian crisis because of fighting between the regular army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
Al-Fashaga is at the border of Ethiopia's Tigray region, which experienced a civil war that killed at least 600,000 people. Over the years, thousands of refugees and farmers crossed this porous border seeking refuge in Sudan, where the army took control of the area in 2020 after the Tigray conflict broke out.
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