The United Nations Children’s Fund warned that Sudan’s grinding civil war is tipping large parts of the country toward famine, with severe acute malnutrition (SAM) among children rising sharply in every recent battleground. In a report released Friday, the agency said more than 40,000 children in North Darfur were treated for SAM between January and May, twice the number recorded during the same period last year. Across the five Darfur states, admissions for life-threatening malnutrition jumped 46 percent, breaching World Health Organization emergency thresholds in nine of 13 localities. The crisis is most acute in El-Fasher—North Darfur’s besieged capital—where humanitarian convoys have been blocked and hospitals struck amid intensified fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. Surging hunger is not confined to Darfur. SAM cases rose 70 percent in North Kordofan, 174 percent in Khartoum and nearly seven-fold in Al-Jazirah, figures that UNICEF partly attributes to improved access allowing more families to reach treatment centers. Yet aid workers report patients begging for food instead of medicine, with protein deficiency slowing recovery from injuries. UNICEF appealed for an additional $200 million this year to expand nutrition programs and called on all parties to guarantee unhindered humanitarian access. “Children in Darfur are being starved by conflict and cut off from the very aid that could save them,” said Sheldon Yett, the agency’s representative in Sudan.