{"id":20823,"date":"2024-05-04T21:30:45","date_gmt":"2024-05-04T18:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/?p=20823"},"modified":"2024-05-04T21:30:45","modified_gmt":"2024-05-04T18:30:45","slug":"armed-groups-besieging-towns-in-northeastern-mali-driving-residents-to-hunger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/2024\/05\/04\/armed-groups-besieging-towns-in-northeastern-mali-driving-residents-to-hunger\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed Groups Besieging Towns in Northeastern Mali Driving Residents, to Hunger"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>AP<\/strong><br \/>\nA humanitarian crisis is worsening in northeastern Mali where armed groups linked to Islamic State have besieged major towns leaving residents including some 80,000 children vulnerable to malnutrition, locals and an aid group warned Wednesday.<br \/>\nThe town of M\u00e9naka has been under siege for four months, driving up the prices of food. Other essential goods like medication are increasingly hard to find, residents and aid groups say.<br \/>\n\u201cThe humanitarian situation is catastrophic, with displaced people going from house to house asking for food for their families. Children are threatened with starvation,\u201d Wani Ould Hamadi, deputy mayor of the town of M\u00e9naka, said.<br \/>\nMali, along with its neighbors Burkina Faso and Niger, has for over a decade battled an insurgency fought by armed groups, including some allied with al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Following military coups in all three nations in recent years, the ruling juntas have expelled French forces and turned to Russia\u2019s mercenary units for security assistance instead.<br \/>\nCol. Assimi Goita, who took charge in Mali after a second coup in 2021, promised to beat back the armed groups, but the United Nations and other analysts say the government has rapidly lost ground.<br \/>\nThe aid group Save the Children said some 80,000 children were trapped inside the town of M\u00e9naka facing malnutrition and disease, and many were unaccompanied having fled violence elsewhere.<br \/>\n\u201cChildren in Menaka are trapped in a living nightmare. Let us be clear: unless the blockade is lifted , starvation and disease will led to deaths,\u201d Siaka Ouattara, the country director, said in a statement.<br \/>\nAyouba Ag Nadroun, a man who fled to M\u00e9naka to escape violence in other parts of the country said he was unable to provide for his extended family of some 15 members, including many women and children, and surviving on scarce handouts of aid. \u201cI have no job, how can I help them?\u201d he said.<br \/>\n\u201cThe blockades subject villagers to violence, hunger and fear and have long been a tactic used by these jihadist groups to punish communities for their perceived support of the government,\u201d said Sahel analyst Corinne Dufka adding that they had often succeeded in pressuring the communities to sign non-aggression accords with the groups.<br \/>\nMali\u2019s leader, Goita, has promised to return the country to democracy in early 2024. But in September, the junta canceled elections scheduled for February 2024 indefinitely, citing the need for further technical preparations.<br \/>\nLast month, his ruling junta ordered all political activities to stop, and the following day ordered the media to stop reporting on political activities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>AP A humanitarian crisis is worsening in northeastern Mali where armed groups linked to Islamic State have besieged major towns leaving residents including some 80,000 children vulnerable to malnutrition, locals and an aid group warned Wednesday. The town of M\u00e9naka has been under siege for four months, driving up the prices of food. Other essential &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":20827,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20823","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20823","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20828,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20823\/revisions\/20828"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sudanevents.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}