The war in Sudan has claimed the lives of tens of thousands and pushed the country to the brink of famine [Getty/archive]
Thousands have fled a town in southern Sudan since clashes erupted last week between the Sudanese army and rival paramilitaries, the United Nations’ migration agency said Sunday.
The conflict in Sudan, which erupted in mid-April 2023, has pitted the forces of army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan against his former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo, who leads the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF).
“Between 1,000 and 3,000 households were displaced from Um Rawaba town” in North Kordofan state in the country’s south in just five days, the UN’s International Organisation for Migration said.
Clashes broke out in the area last week between the army and the RSF, at the same time that the military led an advance on the central Sudan state of Al-Jazira, some 300 kilometres (186 miles) northeast.
Families fled “due to increased security concerns following continued clashes across the locality,” the IOM said.
In North Kordofan, over 205,000 people are currently displaced, according to the latest UN figures released on Wednesday.
Across the country, 11.5 million people are internally displaced – including 2.7 displaced in prior conflicts – in what the UN has called the world’s largest displacement crisis.
The war has also claimed the lives of tens of thousands and pushed the country to the brink of famine.
Last month, the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) review said that famine has gripped five areas in western and southern Sudan, and is expected to spread to five more.
Around 350,000 people in North Kordofan are currently experiencing emergency levels of hunger, the report found — the final stage before famine is declared.
The IPC said that “only a ceasefire can reduce the risk of famine spreading further”, with 24.6 million people – nearly half the population – already facing “high levels of acute food insecurity”.
Attack on MSF ambulance in Darfur
French medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) on Sunday said a passenger was killed in what it described as a “despicable attack” on one of its ambulances in Sudan’s Darfur region.
Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur state, has for months been the site of fierce fighting between the RSF on one side and the Sudanese army and allied armed groups on the other.
It is the only major city in Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur that the RSF has not managed to capture.
MSF is one of the few international organisations still present in the city, where nearly all medical facilities have been forced shut amid repeated attacks on healthcare.
On Friday, an ambulance was carrying a female patient in labour who required an emergency surgical procedure from the Zamzam displacement camp to the city’s Saudi Hospital, MSF said.
The charity said in a statement that the facility is “the only public hospital with surgical capacity still standing”.
“An unknown gunman” shot at “the clearly marked ambulance with the MSF logo and flag”, it said, killing one of the patient’s caretakers.
This is the second time an MSF ambulance has been shot at in Al-Fashir in less than a month.
Regular attacks on healthcare facilities and health workers have shuttered hospitals across the country, where up to 80 percent of facilities are out of service, according to official figures.
On Friday, MSF announced it had been forced to suspend activities in the Bashair Hospital in Khartoum, one of the last remaining facilities offering free medical care in the capital’s south.
