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STORY: Gihad Salaheldin escaped the Al Shajarah neighborhood in Khartoum at the end of last year.

It's just one of the areas, amid the horror of Sudan's conflict, that has been running out of food.

Salaheldin is now in Egypt, volunteering as part of the so-called "emergency response rooms" - a network that has been feeding and evacuating residents across Sudan.

"Some products enter the area sometimes through smuggling at night. Some citizens risk their lives amid this danger to bring food for their families and neighbors. This is very dangerous for them, they might get killed or detained, everything is possible, but they take the risk so that at least they can bring food."

The number of Sudanese facing emergency levels of hunger - that's one stage before famine - has more than tripled in a year to almost five million.

That's according to the globally recognized food security index, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification.

In Darfur, in western Sudan, some areas haven't received any aid since the Sudanese military and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces went to war in April last year.

Aid agencies say they haven't been able to deliver food to many areas.

And they warn that hunger is set to worsen as Sudan's April-July lean season approaches - when food availability is low because farmers are planting.

David Miliband is CEO and president of the International Rescue Committee.

"So the greatest risk to the aid operation is the conflict, and the biggest losers are obviously the civilians who are suffering from conflict but also from its consequences. The food insecurity situation, the famine situation, the danger of famine situation, is now a critical factor."

So far Sudan's conflict has killed more than 14,000 people, according to U.N. estimates.

Eight million have been driven from their homes in what is the world's largest displacement crisis.

In the capital, hundreds of thousands of people face a daily struggle to find food.

Communal kitchens they've been depending on have been threatened by dwindling supplies and a communications blackout across much of the country in recent weeks.

Without internet they've been unable to receive donations via a mobile banking app.

The emergency response rooms in Khartoum state said on March 3 that they had been forced to shut 221 of these kitchens because of the blackout.

Recently some donations have started to trickle in as volunteers gain sporadic access to the internet using billionaire Elon Musk's Starlink in some places.

But little international aid is being deployed as humanitarian agencies struggle to get the necessary entry and transport permits from authorities.

According to a government statement on Wednesday (March 6), Sudan has agreed - for the first time - to take delivery of humanitarian aid via neighboring Chad and South Sudan.

The United States and the European Union have criticized both the army and the RSF for the breakdown in aid distribution.

Sudan's military and the RSF did not respond to requests for comment for this report.