Civilians in Sudan, including scores of internally displaced people and refugees, are scrambling for safety and suffering the disastrous consequences of the violence there, as many aid operations have been forced to pause, UN humanitarians said on Friday.
The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) said that tens of thousands of refugees from South Sudan, Ethiopia and Eritrea living in the country have fled the fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in the Khartoum area.
The newly displaced have found shelter in existing refugee camps further east and south, creating new humanitarian challenges.
UNHCR is also particularly concerned about the situation in the Darfur region, where fears are deepening of a revival of ethnic tensions.
Darfur alert
The agency's representative in Sudan, Axel Bisschop, told reporters in Geneva that Darfur might present the "biggest challenge" from a humanitarian point of view. "We're concerned that the intercommunal violence is going to increase and that we might have some situations which will repeat in relation to what we had a couple of years ago," in a region which has already experienced severe conflict and displacement, he said.
UNHCR stressed that Darfur presents "a myriad of pressing protection issues", highlighting that a number of sites hosting internally displaced people have been burned to the ground, while civilian houses and humanitarian premises have been hit by bullets.
Concerns over the region are shared by the UN rights office (OHCHR), which warned on Friday of a "serious risk" of violence escalating in West Darfur as the hostilities between the RSF and SAF have triggered intercommunal violence.
OHCHR spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani said that in El Geneina, West Darfur, "deadly ethnic clashes" have been reported and an estimated 96 people have been killed since 24 April.
