The war in Sudan has forced 100,000 people to flee across the border and the fighting now in its third week is creating a humanitarian crisis, United Nations (UN) officials said on Tuesday, as gunfire and explosions echoed through the capital, violating another ceasefire.
The conflict risks turning into a wider disaster as Sudan’s impoverished neighbors grapple with a refugee crisis and fighting cuts off aid routes in a country where two-thirds of the population already relies on some form of external support .
“The risk is that it won’t just be a crisis in Sudan, it will be a regional crisis,” said Michael Dunford, the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) director for East Africa.
UN officials said UN aid chief Martin Griffiths plans to visit Sudan, possibly on Tuesday, but the timing has yet to be confirmed. WFP said on Monday it would resume work in safer parts of the country after a lull at the start of the conflict, when some program staff were killed.
The leaders of the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which previously shared power, show no sign of giving up, but neither seems able to secure a quick victory, raising the specter of a protracted conflict that it could involve foreign powers.
On Tuesday, black smoke could be seen billowing over the capital Khartoum, which sits at the confluence of the Blue and White Nile rivers. Airstrikes hit Bahri on the east bank, while fighting raged in Omdurman to the west, witnesses said.
Hundreds of people died in fighting between the army commanded by General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF commanded by General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, also known as Hemedti. Each blames the other for violating a series of ceasefire agreements.
The army used air force against RSF units stationed in residential areas of Khartoum, damaging parts of the capital and reigniting conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan’s far west.
Port Sudan, where thousands of people have fled Khartoum, is the main entry point for aid for many countries in the region, WFP’s Dunford told Reuters.
“If we don’t stop the fighting, if we don’t stop it now, the impact on a humanitarian scale will be enormous,” he said.
Kenya has offered the use of its airports and airstrips near the border with South Sudan as part of an international humanitarian effort, Kenyan Foreign Minister Alfred Mutua said.
Aid supplies arriving at Port Sudan for other aid agencies were still awaiting safe passage to Khartoum on Monday, a road journey of some 800km, although Médecins Sans Frontières said it had delivered some aid to Khartoum.
Some 330,000 Sudanese have been displaced within Sudan’s borders by the war, the United Nations immigration agency said.
Thousands of Sudanese are also trying to leave the country, many across the borders of Egypt, Chad and South Sudan. The United Nations warned on Monday that 800,000 people could eventually leave, including refugees temporarily living in Sudan.
Source: Terra
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