The United Nations said Tuesday the surging violence in Sudan is likely to drive more than 1 million refugees out of the African country by October, as the 10-week conflict shows few signs of easing.
Sudan descended into chaos after fighting erupted in mid-April between the military, led by Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan, and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, commanded by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo. Since then, over 3,000 people have been killed, the country’s Health Ministry said, while about 2.5 million people have been displaced, according to the U.N.
The violence has been most acute in the capital, Khartoum, but also in the western Darfur region, where RSF and Arab militias are reportedly targeting non-Arab tribes, local rights groups and the U.N. said. Most of those who have escaped have fled east to Chad.
“We were talking about 100,000 people in six months (fleeing to) Chad. And now the colleagues in Chad have revised their figures to 245,000,” said Raouf Mazou, assistant secretary-general at United Nations High Commission for Refugees, at a news conference in the Swiss city of Geneva.
Burhan and Dagalo separately declared a truce to mark the beginning of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha this week. Dagalo, in a voice recording posted on his social media page late Monday, said the truce would last Tuesday and Wednesday; while Burhan, in a televised speech broadcast Tuesday evening, said a “unilateral cease-fire” would take place on Wednesday.
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