Over 1m people displaced: UN
More than a million people have been displaced by fighting in Sudan so far, including a quarter of a million refugees, a UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson said yesterday.
The army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces have been locked in weeks of conflict that has killed hundreds of people and turned the streets of the capital Khartoum into war zones.
The latest figure includes some 843,000 people displaced internally and around 250,000 people who have fled across Sudan's borders, UN refugee agency spokesperson Matthew Saltmarsh told a Geneva briefing.
Refugees have streamed into Sudan's neighbours, including Chad, Ethiopia and South Sudan, with their own poorly-funded humanitarian crises. Egypt has so far received the highest number of Sudanese refugees with around 110,000 arriving there since the conflict broke out last month, Saltmarsh added.
"Many of those who have approached us are in a distressed state having been exposed to violence or traumatic conditions in Sudan, and having suffered arduous journeys," Saltmarsh said. The pace has increased in recent weeks, he added, with some 5,000 arriving each day in Egypt.
Meanwhile, Sudan's capital Khartoum and sister city Bahri came under renewed air attack yesterday as the war between the army and paramilitary forces entered its fifth week.
Mass looting by armed men and civilians alike is making life an even greater misery for Khartoum residents pinned down by fierce fighting between the regular military and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), witnesses said.
Army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan took the long-anticipated step of removing RSF chief Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as Hemedti, from his post as his deputy on the ruling Sovereign Council.
The two had run the council since 2019 when they overthrew strongman President Omar al-Bashir amid mass protests against his rule, before staging a coup in 2021 as a deadline neared to hand power to civilians for a transition towards free elections.
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