More than 100,000 people have now fled Sudan to neighbouring countries, according to United Nations figures. Upwards of 330,000 have been displaced inside the country since the conflict began on April 15th.
The fighting has seen the Sudanese army, under general Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, pitted against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), led by general Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who is widely known as Hemedti.
Various ceasefires have failed to properly hold. Yesterday, both sides agreed in principle to a seven-day truce from Thursday.
More than 500 people have been killed, according to Sudan’s health ministry, and thousands injured.
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Abdou Dieng, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator in Sudan, said the country’s humanitarian crisis was being turned into a “full-blown catastrophe”. Before the current fighting, one-third of Sudan’s population was already said to be in need of humanitarian assistance.
Sudan was also hosting more than one million refugees when the conflict broke out, including more than 300,000 in Khartoum. They included people who had fled war in South Sudan and Ethiopia, and a dictatorship in Eritrea.
While one Ethiopian man told The Irish Times his family had nowhere to go and were stuck inside the city waiting for assistance from humanitarian organisations, The Irish Times was in touch with two other refugees – both Eritrean – who managed to travel east. One crossed the border into Ethiopia but said he still didn’t feel safe. The other remains in Sudan and both said they were still concerned about security, including a lack of respect for their refugee status and potential deportations to the countries from which they fled.
Much of the limited aid efforts are being co-ordinated through Sudanese community groups and the Sudanese diaspora, with the UN saying its work has been hampered by widespread looting of its offices and warehouses.
“Goods essential for people’s survival are becoming scarce in the hardest-hit urban centres, especially Khartoum, and families are struggling to access water, food, fuel and other critical commodities,” said Martin Griffiths, under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief co-ordinator, in a statement on Sunday. “The cost of transportation out of worst-hit areas has risen exponentially, leaving the most vulnerable unable to locate to safer areas. Access to urgent healthcare, including for those injured in the violence, is severely constrained, raising the risk of preventable death.”
He added “the scale and speed of what is unfolding in Sudan is unprecedented”.
Fighting and looting has also been taking place in Darfur. Last Friday, medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said its hospital in El Geneina, west Darfur, had been looted. “The current fighting has forced us to stop almost all of our activities in west Darfur. Our teams had not been able to reach the hospital, nor could they conduct mobile clinic activities,” said Sylvain Perron, MSF deputy operations manager for Sudan.
Amid an increase in disinformation, the BBC has launched an emergency pop-up radio service for Sudan, through BBC News Arabic, which will broadcast twice daily for three months on shortwave radio in Sudan, as well as online.
