At least 500 children “and probably hundreds more” starved to death during the four-month war in Sudan, announced the non-governmental organization Save the Children.

In a country where before the war one in three people suffered from hunger, “children are dying of hunger at a time when this could have been completely avoided,” the director of the organization in Sudan, Arif Nur, complains in a statement.

“At least 498 in Sudan and probably hundreds more have died of starvation” since the war began on April 15. We could never have imagined that we would see so many children starve to death, but this is the new reality in Sudan,” he said in a statement.

And the situation can worsen because Save the Children, unable to function in the midst of conflict, was forced to stop “aid to 31,000 children suffering from malnutrition”. In May, the factory that produced 60% of the products to tackle child malnutrition was destroyed.

The war – which analysts say is likely to last for years – between Sudan’s regular army and the Rapid Support Force has killed 5,000 people since April, according to a tally by the NGO Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project. (Acled).

It has also forced more than four million people to leave their homes.

The international community is struggling to fund aid for internally displaced people, the injured and victims of sexual violence, while international justice is concerned about the commission of “war crimes”.

The humanitarian organizations, which are blocked from their movement by the authorities and are under attack, repeat that they have not received pup to 27% of their financing needs.

Conflict continues mainly in Khartoum and Darfur, a region where a quarter of Sudan’s 48 million people live. In Darfur, the conflict is centered in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, where since August 11, 60 people have been killed, 250 injured and 50,000 displaced, according to the UN.

As the fighting blocks access for trucks carrying humanitarian aid, the Turkish hospital, the only one still operating in Niala, said it was overwhelmed by the wounded.

Recently, the war spread to al-Fasher, the capital of North Darfurafter, according to the Yale University Humanitarian Research Laboratory, at least 25 Darfur villages were burned by the Rapid Support Forces and their allied Arab militias.